


A Thought Away

by phyripo



Series: A Thought Away [1]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe - Sense8 (TV) Fusion, Don't Have to Know Sense8 Canon, F/F, F/M, Friendship, Gen, M/M, Mostly Gen, POV Multiple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-03
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-06-06 05:26:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 60,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6740170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phyripo/pseuds/phyripo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When eight people from across the world suddenly gain access to each other's minds, each other's memories and skills, unexpected friendships bloom and secrets are uncovered.</p><p>From Estonia to Hong Kong and from Romania to the Seychelles; this might be the best thing that has ever happened to all of them. But it is also the end of their normal lives, because when you're a Sensate, danger is never far away.</p><p>Or: The Hetalia/Sense8 fusion no one asked for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I had this idea and it would not go away. It just wouldn't.  
> Sense8 is really cool.  
> And I like minor characters.  
> (triumphant trumpet sound)
> 
> FEATURING  
> Australia – David Clarke  
> Belarus – Natalya  
> Estonia – Eduard Mets  
> Finland – Tuomi Väinämöinen-Oxenstierna  
> Hong Kong – Leon Li  
> Monaco – Olympe Castil  
> Romania – Alin Rotaru  
> Seychelles – Angélique Verlaque
> 
> (Also featuring other characters. I'll put them at the end of the chapter where they appear.)  
> The pairings I tagged are rather background; Finland/Sweden is established and the rest will come in later. What the hell ship is Belarus/Monaco, you ask? I have no idea, but it's very interesting. 
> 
> I've been working on this for quite a while and decided to make it my Camp Nano project, and I managed to win for the first time ever! And I _had_ to have eight chapters, so they all got pretty long. But the entire thing is written, so yay!
> 
> It was really tempting to call this H8alia, but I valiantly resisted.
> 
> Onwards.

There is a woman sitting in an alley in Bucharest, Romania. She is wearing a long purple dress.

She stands up in the humid air of La Digue, Seychelles, and looks around at the tightly packed houses in Aberdeen, Hong Kong.

A girl brushes by without noticing her in Coffs Harbour, Australia.

The woman lifts her dress and walks through the snow on the border of Finland and Sweden. There are no footprints where she steps. She passes through a casino in Las Vegas, USA, and steps into the snowy streets of Kiev, Ukraine.

When she turns, there is a man in Tallinn, Estonia, staring at her, wondering how she got into his home.

In a chilly house in the mountains of Greece, a woman in a purple dress falls to the floor, and eight people around the world see her go down.


	2. messing with my brain

David wakes groggy and disoriented. His eyes are only open a crack, but he can see that it is much too dark in his room, and he can hear the radiator making ticking noises, which it should not be doing because it’s summer. He groans and attempts to roll to his back, but is stopped by a very solid, warm body behind him.

Now confused, David opens his eyes fully.

It does not help.

He doesn’t know this room, with its light blue walls and heavy white curtains. With dread, he looks at the person in bed with him.

It’s a man. David doesn’t know him either.

He jumps out of bed, loses his balance, tries to catch himself, and falls over on the bed because part of his left arm is _gone_. Vanished, half down the forearm. David stares dumbly at it, and the doctor part of his brain tells him it’s amputated before the rest can kick in. When it does, he lets out a panicked shriek.

When the man in the bed opens his eyes, David jumps back. Tries to find something to defend himself with. There is nothing.

“Don’t touch me!” he yells when the man stands up. He’s tall, taller even than David, and his eyes are an incredibly piercing shade of light blue, even when he puts a pair of wire-rimmed glasses on.

“It’s me,” the man says, “Torbjörn.” He takes a step towards David and holds out his hands when David reels back, palms forward in apparent gesture of goodwill. He is wearing a wedding ring.

“You are home,” he’s saying. “Your name is Tuomi Väinämöinen…”

David bolts for the door, because this man is obviously delusional.

He thunders down the stairs and finds himself in a hall that’s just as light and airy as the bedroom. A neat row of shoes is next to the coat rack. The door to the living room is open, and there are two little boys in there, sitting on a couch watching SpongeBob. One of them looks over the back of the couch, and the smile falls from his small face when he sees David.

“Dad, what’s wrong?” he asks. The other boy glances up too, but then David’s shoulders are caught by strong hands, and the man from the bedroom steers him into a kitchen gently but insistently.

“You’re safe, Tuomi,” ‘Torbjörn’ says. Whatever kind of name _that_ is.

It’s Swedish, David knows, even though he knows nothing about Swedish.

“You’re safe.” His eyes are kind despite their focused intensity, and his hands are strangely familiar and reassuring in their heaviness. David opens his mouth, meaning to ask what the hell is going on here

and then he’s in his own bathroom, both hands gripping the edge of the sink so tight that his knuckles are white, staring at his own panicked face.

For a second, he sees someone else.

* * *

It’s raining.

It’s been raining for days now, and the cold humidity has started to seep into Alin’s bones. All his clothes are slightly damp, and he can’t afford to turn the heating any higher than it is now, so they’re not drying very fast either.

Bucharest is dreary this time of year. The festive lights in the center of the city do little to mask it, at least for Alin. For him, December is a month of scraping by, even more than usual. He does what he can to make the best of it, if just for Luca, but Luca is old enough now that he knows how hard it is on him.

And it’s so cold.

The tiny apartment on the outskirts of the city is badly isolated against the chill, and two out of its four rooms are usually freezing. Alin has pushed the cot he sleeps on as close to the heating as it will go, and he’s still shivering as he sits on it, leafing through the Christmas bargains.

Luca will be coming home from school any minute now, for almost the last time this year, and then Alin will have to surrender his blankets. He burrows deeper into them for the moment, closing his eyes.

What he wouldn’t give to be somewhere else right now. Somewhere warm and sunny, without a worry on his mind.

Hot, humid air presses down on him, and Alin opens his eyes to a picture-perfect turquoise sea, dotted with fishing vessels. He breathes in the scent of salt and brine and exotic flowers.

There is someone – a woman, about his own age – sitting next to him, her toes in the sand. She looks startled to see him.

“Hey,” Alin says, because she’s pretty and made-up, so why wouldn’t he?

“Hi?” she replies. She has curious dark eyes, slanted slightly upwards, and her brown skin is covered in freckles. “Who are you?”

“I’m Alin. Who are you?”

“Angélique,” she says.

Alin buries his fingers in the warm sand. He can feel it very clearly. It’s getting under his nails.

“Where am I?” he asks. This is a weird fantasy.

Angélique tilts her head in confusion. “Near Roche Bois. On La Digue? The Seychelles?”

Alin is half convinced his brain is just making things up, because he has never heard any of those words before. And yet… It is so weirdly vivid, like patches of dreams he remembers having over the last couple of days.

“You speak Romanian,” he says, not sure why he notices. Of course she speaks Romanian. He doesn’t speak many other languages himself, so he can’t expect people he made up to.

“No, I don’t,” she replies, confused. “You speak Seychellois Creole.”

What? Is that even a real language?

“I was just—” He looks around himself. There’s forest behind them. Tropical forest, birdcalls filtering through. “I was just in Bucharest,” he tells Angélique.

“Oh,” she breathes.

“I was cold,” he adds unnecessarily.

“Are you still?”

He shakes his head. “This is just… Gotta be a weird dream. I’ve been having weird dreams lately anyway.”

“Oh, me too,” Angélique says. “They started a few days ago when I had one about that woman…”

“What?”

“I dreamed about this woman in a purple dress, and she—”

“She fainted?”

She nods.

“I had that dream too.” Weird, but maybe not so much if this is really conjured up by Alin’s subconscious.

Angélique wriggles her toes and tugs at the hem of her short blue dress. The water laps gently against the shore.

A door opens. The cold hits Alin like a sack of bricks when Luca enters their dingy apartment.

“Hey brother!” he greets happily. Alin stutters a response, feeling very disoriented and hungry for seafood.

* * *

“But who are they?” Yao asks, loudly. So loudly, in fact, that Leon can hear him through two walls and his headphones.

Admittedly, the walls are very thin, but still.

Leon lifts his headphones so he can listen in on his uncle’s latest mysterious conversation.

“You were there!” he exclaims, and then he lowers his voice. Leon creeps closer to the wall to listen, and Yao continues, “Sorry, Helena, of course I get that. I just think it would be nice to know.”

Leon feels like he should recognize that name. A patron of the restaurant? An – he grins – old girlfriend of his uncle’s? Doesn’t seem quite right. The latter for several reasons.

He props his bedroom door open, and hears a soft woman’s voice answer. He can’t make out her words, so he creeps into the hall. The door to his uncle’s bedroom is open, and Leon tiptoes towards it, mindful of the floorboards he knows are creaky.

Yao sweeps past the door. He is followed by a dark-haired woman in white. She’s not Chinese, Leon thinks. European. And then she turns, and he gasps because he _knows_ that woman. He saw her, the other day, outside in the street. Nobody else paid attention to her, and she later appeared in a dream as well. He was convinced he had imagined her.

She looks at him, and Yao pokes his head around the doorframe, looking between the two of them.

“Oh no,” he then says. “Leon, can you see Helena?”

“Uh, well, if she’s that woman behind you then, yes?”

“Oh,” Helena says. “Oh, Yao, I had no idea.”

Yao presses his lips together, says, “I’d best tell Mei to look after the kitchen for a while. Leon, I have some things to explain to you.”

Maybe she _is_ his girlfriend. Now wouldn’t that be amusing?

Leon blinks, and Helena is gone.

“What – where’d she go?”

“Greece, I’d think.” Yao sighs. “Come over here. I have a lot to tell you.”

* * *

Olympe can hear muffled Chinese coming from her neighbors’ garden. Which is strange, because her neighbors are the most all-American people she’s ever met, she doesn’t think they have any Chinese-speaking friends, and they are on holiday.

She understands nothing, but then she only knows about ten words in Chinese. Curious, she knocks on the wooden fence between her garden and the next.

“Hello?” she calls. The voice that is speaking doesn’t falter. “Who’s there? Are you lost?”

Still, no acknowledgement whatsoever.

Olympe decides to leave it alone and returns to the book she was reading.

* * *

Unbothered by the snow and feeling significantly lighter than two hours ago, Tuomi is driving home through the early dusk, humming a Christmas song as he goes. Even his headache has abated a bit.

Maybe he should stop by the supermarket, he muses. Torbjörn did mention something about them needing more pasta…

“You know,” says a woman’s voice next to him. “I think you shouldn’t listen to that doctor. I’m definitely real.”

Tuomi nearly swerves off the road, into the unforgiving frozen river. He swears, rights the car, and ignores the woman who is suddenly sitting in the passenger seat because she is _not_ real.

“At least I think I am,” she says. She’s speaking Finnish, not Swedish. Tuomi can’t help but glance at her. She’s beautiful in an understated way, and strangely intimidating. Definitely the sort of woman he would have a fantasy about.

“Maybe you’re the one who isn’t real.” She reaches out to Tuomi and touches his shoulder. He can feel it so very clearly, as if she really _is_ sitting right there next to him.

“You feel real.” She peers through the windshield. “Where are we? Finland?”

Tuomi grits his teeth. He’s not crazy. He knows there isn’t actually a woman next to him. He’s alone, and he’s driving home and he has to concentrate because the roads are dangerous.

“I’m Natalya,” the woman-who-isn’t-there offers.

“Natalya how?” asks a man’s voice from the backseat. Tuomi swears loudly and pulls over with screeching brakes, because this is _too much_. The woman – Natalya – seems startled, and next thing Tuomi knows she has a butterfly knife open in her hand and is leaning over her seat to grab the man. Who isn’t there. There is no one in the backseat when Tuomi turns, flinging out an arm to hold the woman back on nothing but ingrained muscle memory.

She feels real too, solid warmth against Tuomi’s good arm. He swears some more, just to relieve some tension. Natalya mutters something sharp under her breath.

“God, okay, maybe you’re fucking real, I don’t even know!” Tuomi exclaims. He slams his hand down on the steering wheel.

Natalya narrows her eyes. “I am. But I’m in Kiev.”

And Tuomi’s surroundings flash. Suddenly they are sitting on a bench in full daylight, looking out over a broad street covered in drab snow.

“What the fuck,” he mumbles. A billboard reads something in Cyrillic script, and somehow he understands it at the same time that he doesn’t. There are few other people out. Before he can take a good look, he’s back in his car.

“What the hell is going _on_?” This morning, he wakes up in an apartment that’s not his, without his husband _or_ his sons, and with his arm completely intact. Torbjörn says he was acting strange, and now – now he’s having hallucinations? Tuomi refuses to believe this. It’s been such a long time since he had any nightmares at all, and hallucinations were never a problem for him. Everything had been going fine.

Natalya presses her lips together. “I wish I knew what was going on. It can’t be good, that’s all I know. Someone is messing with my brain. What’s your name, anyway? And where are we exactly?”

“I’m Tuomi.” Can’t hurt to tell his name to a… Figment of his imagination? Or is Natalya… God, he’s confused. “We’re in northern Sweden. Finland’s over there.” He gestures at the other side of the river, then rests his forehead against the steering wheel in sudden exhaustion.

A throat is cleared from the backseat, and then the same voice as earlier asks, “Tuomi how?”

“Väinämöinen-Oxenstierna,” Tuomi answers, deciding that he doesn’t even care anymore. He’ll just wait here until everything is back to normal and then he will drive home and watch cartoons with Peter and Lars for the rest of the day.

“Hey, who are—” Natalya says sharply. There’s a squeak and a rush of air from the backseat, and she sighs. “Great.”

Tuomi looks up and she’s gone.

* * *

_Tuomi Väinämöinen-Oxenstierna_ , Eduard repeats to himself. His hands shake as he types the name. He’s afraid of what he might find, whether it’s nothing or… Not nothing. Both options are scary, because if he finds nothing, then that means he should probably see a doctor about having uncannily vivid hallucinations, and if he finds _something_ , if Tuomi Väinämöinen-Oxenstierna exists, then something really, _really_ disturbing is going on.

 _Search_. Eduard waits. Cleans his glasses as he pretends not to wait.

A hit.

He exists. Eduard closes his eyes for a long moment, but the letters are still there on the screen when he opens them again, telling him that Tuomas Kalle Väinämöinen-Oxenstierna has lived in Sweden for four years now, having grown up in Finland, and though the picture accompanying the information is tiny and black-and-white, Eduard can tell that it is definitely the man he just saw.

This doesn’t explain anything.

“Need help?” asks someone next to him. Eduard nearly falls off his desk chair, hurrying to close his computer because he’s not technically _allowed_ to access this information.

When he has composed himself again, he finds himself looking at an East Asian man, about the same age as him, who’s casually leaning against the edge of his desk, looking faintly amused. He’s wearing short sleeves and has a pair of headphones around his neck.

“How did you get into my house?” Eduard shouts.

“How did you get into _my_ house?” the man asks.

Eduard’s ears are assaulted by a wall of sound, car horns and people yelling and a radio playing dance music. He’s sitting on a different chair, in a different room, and it’s almost completely dark out.

“Technically my uncle’s house,” the man continues, leaning against the windowsill now. It’s a small room they’re in. “I’m Leon Li. Welcome to Hong Kong.”

“What,” Eduard says weakly. He looks over the rim of his glasses, but everything remains the same, just more blurry.

Leon sits down on a bed that’s shoved into a corner like an afterthought. “You’re the first one I managed to get a hold of. It’s… Kinda hard.”

“First one you managed to…?”

“Yeah, you’re, uh, hold up, I wrote it down so I could explain it better.” He picks up a notebook and flips it open. Eduard is too confused to do anything, so he just sits there as Leon finds the right page, and starts to explain, “So, you and I are Sensates, which means that we are basically, like, connected, to seven other people anywhere in the world. My uncle says – my uncle’s one too – my uncle says it’s like a different sort of human, but he’s not sure either. Do you understand?”

“No?”

“No, I guess it’s kinda vague.” He tucks his dark hair behind his ear. “Okay, what language do you hear me speaking?”

“Estonian,” Eduard answers.

“Well, I don’t speak, like, a word of Estonian. I’m speaking Cantonese. I hear you speaking Cantonese.”

Eduard shakes his head, trying to clear his mind. This is not a dream. He has lucid dreams often, and this is nothing like that. This is as real as anything else in his life. And, strangely enough… It’s not that hard to believe what Leon is saying. His gut tells him he can trust this guy, says _he’s on your side_.

“You said connected. Connected how?”

A small smile appears on Leon’s face. “Connected as in, I can understand your language now. I can use your skills – you’re good with computers?”

“Hmh.”

“Well, then I’m good with computers. If someone in our Cluster – that group of eight – is good at… Like, fencing, I could tap into that knowledge if I needed it. Or that’s how I understood it anyway. I mean, I’m new at this too. And also, if someone in the group would be feeling extremely sad or something, that could affect the others’ moods as well.”

Eduard considers this. “Like, like a hive mind or something?”

“I guess, yeah?”

“So this Tuomi is a Sensate too, then?”

“You saw him?”

Eduard nods. “And a woman. Natalya.”

“That makes four,” Leon muses. “That is half the Cluster. My uncle says it took him over two months to meet all the members of his. Hey, what’s your name anyway?”

“Eduard Mets. Why did this happen to us?”

A shrug. “It’s a thing you’ve always been, a Sensate, but it has to be activated. The, uh, the Cluster has to be birthed. Did you have any weird visions about a woman in a purple dress?” When Eduard nods, he says, “That is Helena. She’s a member of my uncle’s Cluster, and she’s, like, our mom. We wouldn’t be connected without her.”

“I think I need to lie down,” Eduard says.

“Whatever you want. I’ll be here,” Leon replies, putting his headphones on.

* * *

She eyes the man by the high double doors warily. He should have been removed by now, after disturbing the game so rudely, but he’s still there for some reason, looking confused and angry and utterly out of place in his shabby coat and scuffed sneakers. He looks like he is on the verge of being swallowed by the over-the-top wealth of the casino; about to be crushed by a sparkly chandelier or eaten by the carpet.

“What are you looking at, Olympe?” Huang asks from her right.

“Hm? Just… That man over there. Someone ought to escort him out, don’t you think? I don’t think he’s supposed to be here.”

“Who, Marcello?”

She glances up at her friend-slash-opponent. “Not Marcello. That guy over there, next to the flowers. Brown hair, black coat?”

Huang peers intently at the exact spot where Olympe is pointing, but shrugs in confusion. “I don’t see anyone. Do you need new glasses?”

“I think _you_ need new glasses, Paredes.”

He just smiles serenely, as he tends to do. Olympe sighs and decides to do it herself, if no one will listen. She marches over to the doors resolutely, ignoring the sudden cold that sweeps over her as she nears.

“Excuse me?” she asks. The man looks up at her, and she feels like she should know him but it slips away from her. “Can I help you?”

“Oh, thank god,” he says. “At least someone can see me.”

Olympe sees a weird flash out of the corner of her eye, but there’s nothing there when she turns her head. The ground feels strangely uneven underneath her heels, like it’s dirt rather than carpet.

“What do you mean, ‘someone can see you’?”

He shakes his head. “No one was reacting to me. Weren’t you— You saw me during that poker game, didn’t you? I thought everyone was just very good at poker faces.”

“I… I saw you, yes.” To be honest, that was exactly what Olympe had thought. “But why would no one else see you?”

“Don’t know. I’m not a ghost, I think.”

A flicker of gray air and a rush of wind, carrying the smell of grease, like there’s maybe a food cart in the distance – but that’s impossible. It’s night out, and Olympe is inside.

“I really hope I’m not a ghost,” the man says, a note of panic in his voice.

“You’re not— There’s no such thing as ghosts. What are you doing here?”

He raises his shoulders up to his ears. “I wish I knew.”

Olympe just stares at him, because this is _so weird_. There’s a flicker in her surroundings again, and for a split second she could swear she’s in a park on a gray morning, but then there’s a hand on her shoulder, and Huang is there again, telling her she _really_ needs new glasses, if she’s started talking to flower pots already. She doesn’t see the other guy anymore.

* * *

“Okay, so, it’s not like I can go, ‘Hey, Leon, I could use some help… Playing this guitar’?”

“I guess not!” Leon says brightly. He has lost track of time, but he’s having loads of fun experimenting with Eduard, who showed up again when it was afternoon. For Leon, that is. It must be morning in Estonia. “It’s more of a, ‘Hey Eduard, I can play this guitar right now, take it or leave it’, sort of thing, apparently.”

“Hm-hm,” Eduard replies. He adds something to a document on his laptop. Leon isn’t sure what he’s been writing down, but he thinks it might be useful.

Leon plucks at the strings of his guitar, then says, “But maybe if one of us were in a very, like, dire position, or really needed someone else’s help, it would work the other way around. It seems kinda useless otherwise, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, you’re ri—”

A loud crash from behind them. They both whip around to find a guy in swimming trunks sprawled against Leon’s wardrobe, probably having tripped over the pile of shoes next to it. He swears, and Leon rushes over to help him up. Another Cluster member!

The man shoves Leon away as soon he’s upright, eyes wide as they flit around the room in a panic.

“No, no no no,” he says, and he turns around, reaching for the door. “Not again.”

Leon glances at Eduard. Again? So he’s had an encounter with another of their group.

The door is locked – Leon doesn’t want his sister to walk in on him most days, but especially not when he would appear to be talking to himself. The man rests his forehead against it.

“Hey, uh,” Eduard says, sounding unsure. “Don’t worry, this isn’t a bad thing. Who are you?”

“I’m David,” he mutters despondently. Then he turns his head and looks at Eduard. “You don’t think I’m someone else.”

“No?”

He turns around fully, resting his broad shoulders against the door and frowning.

Leon leans against his wardrobe, looking at their new Cluster member. He is good-looking – tall, tan and muscular, with brown hair kept back by a pair of sunglasses, a few strands springing up. Not from Europe, where it’s winter, Leon guesses. Oceania, South America?

“Okay, what’s going on?” David finally asks.

“You’re a Sensate,” Leon says.

“I’m a what?”

Suppressing a chuckle, Leon repeats his explanation from yesterday, adding the things he and Eduard have figured out.

“Tuomi!” David says when Leon mentions him. “That was what that guy was calling me.”

“What guy?”

Eduard replies, “Probably Tuomi’s husband. His name is, uhm…” He squints at his laptop. “Torbjörn.”

“Yes, that’s his name!” David exclaims. “But why did he think I was Tuomi?”

Leon looks at the notes he made on his uncle’s information, but doesn’t find anything useful. He tells David he’ll ask, or they’ll figure it out on their own.

“Where are you from, by the way?”

David grins, showing straight white teeth. “I’m from Australia. New South Wales.” Then he frowns. “Where am I now, anyway?”

“Hong Kong.” What time is it? Leon has barely gotten any sleep last night, and feels a little fuzzy. It’s possible his shift in his uncle’s restaurant is about to start, he thinks. And he can’t ask Mei to cover for him again.

“Cool,” David says. “But I wanted to go surfing for a while before I have to go to work, so do you have any idea how I can get back home?”

They both shrug, David shakes his head in amusement, and then he’s gone, just like that.

Eduard chuckles. “Guess he has that down.”

Leon nods. So that’s five members down. Three to go.

“ _Leon_!” yells his sister from the hall. “Do you have any idea what _time_ it is? Yao is about to freak out!”

They’ll have to wait.

* * *

“Dad!” Angélique yells. “I’m home!”

“Hello!” her father shouts back from somewhere in the house.

Smiling at the picture of her mother in the hall, Angélique takes off her sandy shoes. She puts them away to clean later – she’s hungry now and wants to eat first.

She finds her father in the kitchen, and presses a kiss to his bristly cheek.

“How was your day?” he asks as she lifts lids off pans and peers into the oven curiously.

“Great!” She grins broadly. “Oh, I finally managed not to fall off my surfboard today, isn’t that great? I thought I’d never get it right.”

“Congratulations.”

“Raj said it was a miracle. Which is kind of rude, now that I think about it.”

Her father laughs warmly.

* * *

Riley stares at David.

“You’re shitting me.”

“I’m not shitting— I’m completely serious, Riles. I know I sound barking mad, I wouldn’t believe me either, but honestly. Seven other people, all in there.” He taps the side of his head.

“You’re a doctor, Dave, you know that that’s not right.”

“It’s not like that. They’re real people.”

Riley holds their hands up. “Oh, they’re real people. That makes it completely normal.”

Running a hand through his hair, David attempts to explain to his roommate again, “I’m not saying it’s normal. It’s fucking insane, is what it is. But it’s the truth. It’s like a hive mind or something.”

He doesn’t know why he told Riley to begin with – yes, they’re his best friend, and he’d trust them with his life, but of course Riley was going to think he’s gone crazy. He’d think he’d gone crazy. Hell, he’s not sure he _hasn’t_.

“Well, then prove it,” Riley says.

“Prove— How?”

They shrug. “You’re the ‘Sensate’, mate, you figure it out.”

“We’ll… We’ll look one of ‘em up.” He should have asked for their phone numbers. Next time, he resolves.

“Well, how do I know you’re not just picking a name at random?”

David waves his hands through the air. “Do you think I could make up a name like ‘Tuomi Väinämöinen’? Honestly.”

“I think you can make up lots of things.”

The two of them stare at each other for a long while, but David’s eyes start to get tired. He’s been up for a long time, and a lot has happened today.

“You know what, Riles, I feel stuffed, I’m going to bed. I’ll think of something.” He stands up. Frowns. “Why are you awake anyway?”

Riley grins. “Maybe I was waiting for you to come home, my bold, handsome—”

“I’m going!” David shouts, leaving Riley to laugh at their own joke.

* * *

“You’re in a good mood,” Eduard’s coworker comments, leaning back in her chair to look at him. “Something nice happen to you?” The accompanying eyebrow wiggle makes it very clear what she thinks happened, but Eduard shakes his head with a smile. He couldn’t explain if he wanted to – it’s just so unbelievable.

“Uh-huh,” says his coworker, but she quickly goes back to work when she sees their boss approaching. Eduard turns back to his computer too, but as he crunches numbers, his mind keeps drifting to what happened yesterday and today. He wants to know so much more. Who are the other members of his Cluster, those three they’re missing? What purpose does this all serve, and what more can they do with their connection?

It’s so strange how his life has been turned on its head in a couple of days, yet nothing appears to have changed.

“Mets? A word, please.”

Eduard snaps out of his thoughts and looks up at his boss, who is gazing down at him sternly.

“Of course.”

Shrugging at his coworker, he follows the man to his office, where he is not offered a chair while his boss leans against the desk.

“Look, Eduard, you’re a smart man, I understand that, and I value that, you know. But—” He picks up a folder, opens it, and turns it to Eduard, who immediately recognizes it as the report on his latest case, which he finished yesterday. “Please explain to me why you thought it would be necessary to write the last part of this in _Romanian_?”

“Roma— What?” Eduard reaches for the folder and flips through his report. It all looks like perfectly normal Estonian to him, until he focuses – or unfocuses, maybe – and he stops understanding his own conclusion. It’s all weird diacritics and strange consonant clusters, and it makes no sense at all.

“Oh,” he says. “I, uhm, sorry. I’ll redo it?”

“Yes, of course, but why did you do it in the first place?”

Eduard shrugs, because he honestly doesn’t know. He hadn’t noticed. Apparently, someone in his Cluster speaks Romanian, he thinks, but he can hardly tell his boss that.

“Very well,” his boss sighs. “Go back to work. I expect this fixed by day’s end.”

* * *

Cautiously, Olympe picks her way across the uneven sidewalk, taking care not to put her stiletto in a hole. It’s cold, the by now familiar cool desert air not yet having been dissipated with the dawning day’s heat. Sometimes, Olympe wishes for nothing more than a breeze from the sea to blow over the city. She wonders if that would make her feel more at home.

She almost puts her foot wrong, but manages to catch herself before she twists her ankle. At some point she _will_ start bringing flat shoes to games, self-consciousness be damned.

“Need a hand, beautiful?” someone calls. A man, on the same side of the street. He’s slurring. Olympe ignores him.

“I know _I_ could use a hand.” He laughs loudly, and a chorus of drunken giggles fills the air. Wonderful. Why do these guys always come in packs?

Then one of them is on her right, bringing with him a waft of alcohol. She tosses her braid over her left shoulder and keeps her hand on her bag, but doesn’t acknowledge his presence. She’s almost at the bus stop.

“Hey, sweetheart,” the guy says, reaching out to her arm. She snatches it back.

“Do not touch me,” she hisses, but the man only grins. He can’t be older than twenty-five.

“Nice accent,” he slurs. “Where ya from? France?” When Olympe doesn’t react, he grabs her upper arm, and clenches when she tries to yank it back.

“C’mon, lil’ French girl. I’ll show ya how we do—” Hiccup. His friends laugh uproariously. “How we do it in ‘Merica!”

Olympe tries to reach inside her bag, but the drunken man tugs at her arm, and she loses her balance. She tumbles into him, and he catches her effortlessly, even in the state he’s in. He’s at least two heads taller than her.

“Leave me alone,” she says. Her poker face remains firmly in place, but only because of years of practice, though admittedly not in situations like this one.

The drunken guy’s friends are cheering.

“Yer pretty,” he says. Olympe elbows him in the stomach, but it doesn’t have much of an effect on him. Perhaps she should just start yelling. Someone will come and help, right?

A sticky hand closes over her mouth and nose. One of the other guys.

No, no no – that is very bad. Olympe thrashes from side to side, but the men are too strong and she is _too small_.

A feeling of vertigo sweeps over her, and she’s disoriented briefly, but when she can focus again, she is kicking the feet out from under one of the guys with a strength she didn’t know she possessed. The man falls on the ground.

“Hey!” the other one exclaims, leaning over to look at his friend. Olympe slams the back of her head into his face with a slightly sickening crunch, then feels herself twist out of his grip as if in a dream, turn around, and deliver an extremely accurate punch to his jaw, which actually knocks him out cold.

It’s like there is someone else working her body, Olympe thinks, someone who actually remembers her self-defense classes. She throws a third man who comes at her over her shoulder in a way that she feels should be impossible for her, especially in this dress and with the shoes she’s wearing.

There are two other men, but they seem to realize that Olympe is – apparently – quite dangerous and quickly scuttle off into the dawn.

“I said _leave me alone_ ,” she tells the others. One blinks stupidly.

“I don’t speak Russian,” he says, which makes no sense because Olympe wasn’t speaking Russian. Doesn’t speak Russian at all.

Still, she doesn’t dwell on it, just continues to the bus stop quickly. Flat shoes, she thinks. Bring flat shoes next time.

* * *

Natalya looks around at her hotel room, panting. Slowly, she uncurls her fingers, rubs a hand over her forehead underneath her fringe, and sinks down on the bed. Presses the heels of her hands to her eyes, trying to get the afterimage of a place she doesn’t know out of her mind. It doesn’t work at all.

What the hell is going on?

* * *

“Hey.” Torbjörn sidles into the kitchen and holds the phone out to Tuomi.  “’S for you.”

Looking up from his cooking, Tuomi takes the phone from his husband. “Who…?”

“Dunno. He’s not very good at Swedish.”

An old acquaintance from Finland, maybe. Tuomi presses the phone to his ear.

“Hi, this is Tuomi.”

“Hello, Tuomi! Uhm, this is Eduard. There’s some things I ought to explain to you.” Perfect Finnish.

“I don’t think I know an Eduard,” he says. Torbjörn levels a confused look at him for some reason. Tuomi motions at the pans, urging him to look after the food.

“No, of course, sorry. We sort of met the other day. You were in your car with Natalya—”

“WHAT!” Tuomi yells. He nearly drops the phone. Torbjörn does drop a spoon. “How do you know—”

“Well, I was there, wasn’t I?”

The guy in the backseat. That guy. He’s real. He’s got to be real. Torbjörn talked to him. How the fuck?

“How the fuck?” he asks, out loud. Eduard huffs a laugh.

“It’s kind of a long story,” he says. “Do you have time?”

“Uhm, no… Dinner,” Tuomi says eloquently.

A hum. “Then I will talk to you later. But don’t worry, Tuomi. Nothing is wrong with you.”

“Okay?”

“Okay! See you!”

“Yeah?”

Tuomi gives Torbjörn the phone back in a daze. The man wraps his arms around him and rests his chin on his head.

“Y’alright?”

Leaning back against him, Tuomi says, “I guess?”

“Didn’t know you spoke Estonian.”

He tilts his head back to look up at his husband. “I don’t.”

Torbjörn frowns but doesn’t press it. They continue preparing dinner in silence, as is usual, and when everyone has eaten, Torbjörn and Peter clean away the dishes while Lars bangs on his little electric piano, the dog dancing around him and yipping with excitement. Tuomi opens and closes the hand of his prosthetic arm a little spitefully. He’s hardly ever hindered in anything because of the thing, but he can’t play his guitar anymore, and that saddens him sometimes.

He glances around the room, and finds there’s a man sitting at his right, smiling gently, then meeting Tuomi’s gaze with friendly blue-greenish eyes.

“Told you I’d see you,” he says.

“Oh god,” Tuomi breathes. “What are you?”

Eduard – it’s him, it really is – smiles and says, “I’m a Sensate. And so are you.”

* * *

And so the Christmas holidays have rolled around. For Luca, at least. Alin gazes at his little brother from where he’s sorting mail. Urgent, less urgent, to be thrown away. The urgent pile is distressingly high, and it’s all bills. With a sigh, Alin puts his chin in his hands. Luca looks up from his book with a smile.

“Hey, you know what I would like?” Alin asks, sniffing a sudden waft of spices. Luca tilts his head. “Chinese. I really want Chinese food.”

* * *

Leon maneuvers his way through the restaurant to deposit empty dishes with his sister, who’s on cleaning duty. They’re having a good day. It’s busy. Mostly tourists, who, for some reason Leon can’t quite fathom, want to spend their holidays in Hong Kong. Tourists are okay, though. Most of them tip better than the locals.

“Excuse me?” someone asks. Leon turns, ready to take an order, but then he sees David sitting there, this time wearing a shirt that is filled out quite nicely by his broad shoulders. He absolutely dwarfs the tiny table he’s sitting at and is smiling warmly.

“How can I help you?” Leon asks, his waiter voice still in full force.

“I need someone to help me convince Riley I’m telling the truth about the Sensate thing. They don’t believe me – which, understandable, I reckon, but still.” He has a pleasant accent, now that Leon hears him speaking English.

He nods thoughtfully. “Who’s Riley?”

“My best friend. We live together.” A slight frown. “I hope you don’t mind that I told them.”

“Not at all.” He glances at Mei through the window looking into the kitchen. “I’d like to tell my sister, but I wouldn’t even know where to start, to be honest.”

“Yeah, be prepared for an awkward conversation.” He also glances over. “You look a lot like her.”

Leon smiles. “We’re twins. But, like, how can I help you convince your friend?”

“Don’t know yet. Here, come with me.”

The two of them sidle up to the kitchen, and when they pass through the door, Leon finds himself _not_ in the kitchen, but in an unfamiliar room.

“Doors!” David says, grinning. “It makes it easier to visualize going somewhere else, I think.”

They’ll have to have Eduard add that to his document, Leon thinks appreciatively. Very smart.

He looks around the room. It’s a modern living room with a high ceiling and windows looking out over trees and grass that is mostly dead, it seems. Of course, it’s summer in Australia. There seem to be pages from notebooks all over the place, some having been used as coasters or folded into interesting shapes. There is a fluffy white cat sleeping on the couch.

“Now what?” Leon asks.

“Riles!” David yells.

“What?” a muffled voice comes from upstairs.

“Come down for a minute!”

Leon crosses his arms and shifts his weight. “You know they can’t – they? – can’t see me, right?”

“They is right. And I know. I’ve got an idea.”

Riley enters the room, looking quite bedraggled. They’re wearing an odd assortment of clothes, and their brown hair is mussed.

“What’s it?”

“I found a way to prove the Sensate thing to you,” David says.

“Oh?” they ask, rubbing their eyes.

David shakes his head. “Jesus, Riles, were you sleeping? Even I was awake, and I work night shifts.”

Riley shrugs, stretching.

“Riley’s a writer,” David tells Leon – or thin air, if Riley’s raised eyebrows are anything to go by.

“Well, show me the Sensate thing, Dave. I can’t wait.” There is skepticism in their voice.

David snorts. “Can’t wait to go back to sleep, I’m sure, but okay. Leon, I want you to phone me, if that’s alright.”

“Sure thing,” Leon says, whipping out his phone. He is still connected to his house’s Wi-Fi, which is an odd experience. “Tell me your number.”

David recites his phone number, and Leon dials. David seems relieved when his phone actually begins to ring, and, honestly, Leon shares the sentiment when he hears the dial tone. Despite everything, it was still hard to believe that the other Cluster members are actually real people, somewhere.

“I’m gonna give this to Riley, okay?”

Leon nods. Riley holds out their hand and picks up the phone.

“Hello?”

 “Hello Riley,” Leon says. “I’m Leon.” He sees Riley’s eyes flit around the room. “I like your trousers.”

Riley looks down at their sweatpants in mild confusion.

“He says he likes my trousers.”

“I know,” David says. “He’s standing next to me.” He puts a hand on Leon’s shoulder. “I think he’s lying. Those are awful.”

“He’s right, actually,” Leon amends, then smiles a little when Riley’s jaw drops. They must have realized there is no way Leon could have heard David say that through the phone.

“Where are you from?” they ask. “England?”

“Nah, Hong Kong. It’s the accent, isn’t it? I’ve lived in England for a year, and my mother was born in London.”

“I didn’t know that,” David says.

“We met yesterday, it’s not like you know everything about me,” Leon tells him.

Riley is slowly lowering the phone.

“Please tell them I’m going to hang up before I use all my credit.”

David does, and Riley nods dazedly. Leon puts his phone back in his pocket.

“Do you think they believe you now?” he asks David, and the man grins, squeezing his shoulder slightly.

“I guess so. It’s definitely helped my case. You want any help with your sister?”

Leon thinks about this for a moment. “Maybe,” he answers, “at some point. I have my uncle to, like, back me up, so maybe I won’t need it.”

“Sure thing. Thanks, mate.”

“Leon, you better get back to work before Yao catches you slacking,” Mei says. Leon blinks. His sister is looking at him with raised eyebrows.

“Yeah… Sure,” he says.

Mei looks bemused as she shoulders past him.

* * *

It looks like there might be a storm coming. The sky is dark where it meets the sea, and the forest has gone silent as if in anticipation, the only sound the rushing of the breeze through millions and millions of leaves. Angélique squats on the grass, holding her dress down over her knees. It’s one of her longer ones, the one that she only wears to church.

“Hi mom,” she says. “I’m sorry I haven’t come around for so long. We’ve been busy lately, so there hasn’t been that much time.” She shifts her weight. A stray curl escapes from her braid and flutters against her cheek.

“I’m still helping out around the island. Maybe at some point I will find a steady job. I’d like that, but there isn’t much to do but fish or help tourists out around here, you know that.” She tucks her hair behind her ear. “I’ve been having strange dreams lately. And I met a Romanian man the other day, but I’m not sure he was real.”

Putting one knee on the ground, Angélique reaches out to put her fingertips against the smooth, sun-warmed stone of her mother’s headstone.

“But everything is alright. Dad says hello. He had to go back to work, but he’ll be here sometime soon. We miss you.” She recites a quick prayer and stands up. “Bye mom. See you soon.”

Lost in her thoughts, Angélique doesn’t see the man standing right behind her until she almost crashes into his broad chest. The first thing she notices is a strong smell of antiseptic – hospitals; she is all too familiar with that scent. Then; the man is wearing scrubs, and he is not from the island. He’s not the Romanian guy either.

“I’m sorry,” Angélique says quietly in English, stepping back to look up at him.

“No, it’s fine,” he replies, looking around himself. “Where am I?”

Angélique frowns. Why does she keep meeting attractive men who don’t know where they are?

“The Seychelles,” she answers this time.

“Ah,” he says. He smiles a little. “I’m David. You must be another member of our Cluster.”

“I must be what?”

David rubs his arm. “Can we walk for a bit? I’ll explain it to you.”

Well, it is probably better to go somewhere with more people, Angélique reasons. Somewhere that is not a graveyard. So she nods and leads the way out, because apparently the guy doesn’t know how he got here either. Still – he doesn’t seem malignant, not at all. Angélique even feels like she recognizes him, even if she rationally knows she’s never seen him before and his accent seems to indicate he’s from Australia.

The wind picks up when they leave the enclosed space of the graveyard. David looks out over the sea with a grin.

“This is beautiful,” he says. “I’d love to surf here.”

“Hm,” Angélique agrees. “It’s a good spot.”

He looks down at her. His eyes are green. “You surf?”

She nods.

“Any good?”

 With a laugh, she replies, “Not usually. This week, I managed to stay upright for more than a minute and my friend called it a miracle.”

“Might have something to do with me,” he mutters. Then, clearly again, “What’s your name?”

She hesitates for a second, then replies, “I’m Angélique. What do you mean, ‘something to do with you’?”

As they walk along the main street, leading away from the church, David explains that they are both something called Sensates, which means that they and others are connected in several ways, and that her sudden advance in surfing skill might be thanks to him going surfing at the same time.

It is hard to believe. Or it should be, but isn’t. It explains the strange dreams, especially the one that started everything, and it even explains the Romanian man.

“Romanian man?” David echoes. They’re nearly at the end of the street now. The sky is rapidly darkening. Angélique ought to be back home by now.

“Hm, uh, Alin. He must be another member of the Cluster, right? He also saw Helena.”

“Yeah, must be,” David confirms. “Ace. That means we’re only missing one name now.” He frowns, staring into the distance. “I need to go back to work.”

“Okay, I’ll— I’ll see you around, I guess?”

A charming grin. “You ever need help with surfing; you know where to find me.”

Angélique wants to say that she has no idea where, or how, to find David, but he’s gone already, just as the first fat raindrops begin to fall.

* * *

Heavy knocking on Natalya’s door, the flimsy wood creaking its protests.

Quickly, she zips up her bag and flicks her knife closed, hiding it up her sleeve. The door rattles.

This was a bad job, she’d known it. If she had any sort of authority, she never would have taken it. The risk was too high – too many chances at discovery, at something backfiring.

The door swings open, revealing first the trembling reception manager, then two men in black standing on either side of him.

Natalya bites the inside of her cheek. See – exactly what she expected.

The reception boy trembles out of the way. Natalya tries to look as shocked as possible while she attempts to think of a plausible lie to tell them, or a lie at all. She knows it’s a futile exercise. She’s always been a terrible actress, and her imagination hasn’t exactly flourished these past years. There’s little time for dreaming with a job like hers. Usually, deflections and outright denials work well enough. Deflections, denials and knives. However, usually, she isn’t caught unawares.

“What is going on?” she manages to exclaim indignantly, opting for English because the name she checked in under is English.

“Don’t think you can fool us,” the tallest man says, stepping into the room.

“Fool—”

“Be quiet,” the other one, with a huge mustache, interrupts. At least they’re both speaking English back. They might not be entirely sure she is the one they’ve been sent after. Good. “Tell us who you are and why you are here.”

“Does he want you to be quiet or does he want you to speak?” a slightly hoarse male voice asks drily from Natalya’s left. She whips her head around so fast that her ponytail slaps into her own face.

“You can’t run away,” say Mustache, apparently not noticing the man who’s sitting on the nightstand, casually gathering his brown hair into a small, messy bun and taking Natalya’s surprise for panicked looking for an exit. “Tell us your name, or we’ll find a way to get you to say it.”

Natalya opens her mouth, but can’t seem to form any words.

“What have you _done_?” asks the brown-haired man.

I’ve gone insane, Natalya thinks.

“Speak up,” the tall man barks.

“Allow me.” A female voice at her right – then Natalya is sitting on the other nightstand and looking at a petite woman with two giant men standing over her. Where _she_ should be.

“I’m Vivian Whitaker and I’m on holiday,” the woman says shrilly, and Natalya wonders how she knows that name. “And I am _not_ having a good time.”

Mustache’s mustache twitches.

“Is it common here to barge into people’s rooms, because let me tell you, where I come from that’s called an invasion of privacy and I could _sue_ you.”

The two men don’t seem to have noticed that this is not Natalya.

“Uhm,” says the tall one. He glances at Mustache.

“I mean, first they put me in this shit hotel—”

She rants on. Natalya feels a vague sense of admiration. For such a small woman, she can really hold her own.

The man on the other side of the bed speaks up again. “No, but seriously. What did you do?”

“I killed a man,” Natalya says. The woman’s tirade falters for a split second.

“Uhm,” says Mustache this time. “Uhm, miss, uhm— We’re, uhm, please don’t sue us?”

“I can’t believe he actually believes her,” the brown-haired man comments. “Maybe he’s just overwhelmed. I think I would be.”

“Shut up,” Natalya hisses.

“And I am _leaving_!” the other woman finishes, then demonstratively picks up Natalya’s bag. She meets Natalya’s eye from behind her glasses, but quickly glances away again. She manages to look haughty even with the large bag slung over her shoulder.

Then the man is in her place, holding the bag, and Mustache and his friend still don’t notice it’s not Natalya. Natalya herself decides she’s unwittingly become a test subject for some form of human experimentation as she and the other woman, now next to her where the man was before, follow him down. He throws Natalya’s key at the terrified clerk, and then they’re outside in the cold and Natalya is holding her own bag. She feels dazed. She never feels dazed.

“What are _you_ doing here?” the small woman nearly-yells at the man. They know each other.

“Helping someone get away with murder, apparently!”

Natalya has no idea where she’s going, but she keeps up a brisk pace. At some point, the men inside will realize they were being stupid and they will follow her. Sooner rather than later, probably.

The other woman’s heels click furiously on the sidewalk. It reminds Natalya of something.

She stops.

“You,” she says, turning to the other two as they skid to a halt. “I helped you. Those drunk men…”

“ _No_ ,” the woman breathes. She is rubbing her bare arms against the cold. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”

“Something strange is going on. I don’t like it.”

“Where are we?” asks the man, looking around. Strands of hair are already escaping from his bun, and he tucks them behind his ears. He has a stud in his left lobe, glinting in the light of the street lanterns.

“Kiev. But I need to get out of here.”

“Because you killed a man.”

Natalya smiles a humorless smile. “Well, that’s my job.” She feels something lumpy in her pocket that she’s pretty sure wasn’t there before and pulls a set of car keys out.

“You’re welcome,” the man says drily. “They can’t get into their car now.”

Maybe he’s not as useless as he seems.

“You stole them?” asks the woman.

“Well, yeah. Sometimes that is my job.”

“Oh god,” she says.

“And you, then? You play poker, right?”

She grimaces. “Yes. But I also hold a degree in international law.”

Oh. Fuck.

* * *

With his chin in his palm, Eduard stares at his computer screen. He can’t believe this.

There is absolutely no information on the existence of Sensates, anywhere. He’s even searched through restricted databases. Nada. Sensates don’t just _not exist_ according to the internet – the idea of them hasn’t even been conceived.

But that is next to impossible, Eduard thinks. Nearly everything has been speculated on at least one obscure website at some point, and of course, it’s not as if Eduard can search the whole of the web, but still. He should have found something.

He is tempted to make a post on his own blog, just to see what happens, if maybe something is deleting every mention of people like him, like some sort of all-knowing Big Brother. Like an almighty Sensate. He decides against it in the end. After all, it’s not the end of the world. It’s just – suspicious. There must be more Clusters than the two he knows of – his own and Leon’s uncle’s. There could be hundreds, thousands of Sensates in the world, and not one of them has ever mentioned anything about it on the internet? No way. He refuses to believe that.

Eduard takes his glasses off and rubs his eyes. At least he managed to convince Tuomi he was telling the truth. He thinks he quite likes Tuomi, from what he knows of the man. He thinks they might have been able to be friends without the connection.

 _Ding_.

An email on a secondary account.

The sender is unknown. The body just says ‘STOP’.

Eduard stares at it. Stop what? The Sensate thing? Unlikely. He thinks further back.

His little online group have thrown a spanner in the works of quite some less-than-legal practices during its existence, admittedly using only slightly more legal tools, so it could be one of those… Maybe it’s just spam.

Eduard decides to sleep on it.

* * *

“You can’t do this!” Alin nearly yells into his phone. “You promised me more time!”

“Yes, last month,” his landlord’s icy voice says. “Your rent for October and November was to be paid this past week at the _latest_. You didn’t. I can’t assume you will magically acquire enough money in the coming week, and I’m not even talking about December yet.”

Alin pushes his hair out of his face frantically. “Aren’t you supposed to give me some sort of notice? Come on, I have Luca to think of. You can’t tell me you expect me to take a thirteen-year-old to live on the streets.”

“ _This_ is your notice, Mr Rotaru. You have until the end of the year to pay up or move out. Your responsibility.”

“Please, please, reconsider. I’ll get another job, I’ll pay—”

“It’s not a matter that’s up for consideration. You defaulted on your rent. Nothing to be done about it. Goodbye, Mr Rotaru.” The line goes dead.

“Yeah, fuck you too,” Alin mutters angrily. His eyes feel prickly with unshed tears. He _can’t_ pay the rent. He knows he can’t. God, how is he going to explain to Luca that they’re going to have to move? Move – he laughs bitterly – move in under a fucking bridge if this keeps up. The only thing he can save money on by now is Luca’s school, and he refuses to let the kid go without education.

Fucking landlord. What kind a coldhearted asshole kicks people out when it’s almost Christmas? Alin’s never liked the guy, has always told Luca to stay away from him, but he did offer cheap housing, even if that meant that it was absolute shit.

Alin will need another job, considering his latest one just ran out. Maybe he can become an assassin too, he thinks. He’ll bet that pays well.

That’s something else! What the fuck is up with those things? First the beach and then the capital of Ukraine. Alin has had a lot of odd fantasies over the years, but these definitely take the cake.

No time to think about that now. He needs money.

There is a man standing with his back to Alin, looking down at his phone, not paying attention to anything else. Alin flexes his cold fingers, feeling a frisson of anticipation. The man’s backpack is actually open a little. It’s almost too easy.

He’s well off, isn’t he, with his nice phone and his leather shoes. And Alin won’t even have a place to live by the end of the year.

Old habits die hard. Bad habits die even harder.

Alin stands up from where he was sitting on a bench and brushes by the man, who’s younger than he thought, not over thirty, and wriggles his fingers into—

In a flash, the man turns around and catches Alin’s wrist in a pale hand.

 _Fucking shit_ , nothing is going right today! Is he getting cocky, what with trying to steal from someone while there’s almost no one else around to use as a distraction? Maybe he’s just desperate.

“I’m sorry,” Alin stammers. “Please don’t call the police. Here, look, I didn’t get anything.” He turns his free hand palm up. He’s never been one for running away after being caught; he has found it is easier to apologize quickly and move on.

The man’s eyes flit over his face. He doesn’t look angry. He just looks… Sort of curious. Odd. He lets go of Alin’s wrist.

“I heard you coming,” he says. There is an accent in his Romanian.

“I’m sorry,” Alin repeats. He tries to assess whether groveling or raising sympathy would work better on this guy.

“I heard you talking on the phone too. Uh.” He rubs one hand over the dark stubble on his chin. “Not in a creepy way or anything. Just accidentally.”

Alin raises his eyebrows in confusion.

“You need a job,” the man says. It sounds half like a question, so Alin nods.

“I can— Okay, now that I think about it, this is actually going to sound rather creepy, but I can offer you one.”

He’s— Kind of cute, smiling sheepishly at Alin. Not creepy at all.

“Wait, what?”

“I don’t know what kind of work you’re looking for—”

“Anything,” Alin says. Is this guy for real? You don’t offer a job from someone who just tried to steal from you. That’s just not a thing that happens. Unless he is being solicited as a prostitute or something, but that’s the one thing he swore he’d never do, no matter how dire his situation would get. That, or kill someone. He isn’t sure how to feel about helping someone else get away with murder.

“Well,” the man says, fiddling with his phone, “I recently inherited a house, and I need someone to look after it while I decide what to do with it. Do some cleaning, you know. Maybe fix some things. It’s dirty, lots of broken stuff around. I— I realize this is really weird, okay, but, I don’t know, you sounded…” He tilts his head a little. “Desperate?”

Alin supposed he did, at that.

“I haven’t drawn up a contract yet, I just arrived in the city, but I could do that in a day or two. So if you are interested…”

“Yes,” Alin replies without hesitation. “Yes. Just. You’re willing to hire the guy who just tried to rob you to look after your house? Doesn’t that strike you as a little odd?”

The man smiles. “Not the oddest thing ever. Besides, you did apologize, and there is a reason, isn’t there? I was thinking about it before, actually. I was trying to figure out how to approach you.”

Alin decides this guy is either the biggest idiot in the entire country, or the greatest person he’ll ever meet. He thinks he likes him no matter which it is.

“Draw up that contract. Let me know.”

“Great.” The man holds out his hand. “I’m Stefan Borisov.”

Alin shakes it. “Alin Rotaru. Nice to meet you.”

* * *

Olympe sits cross-legged on her bed, eyes closed, trying to get her thoughts into some semblance of order.

It’s not working very well.

Everything is a jumble of running and kicking and unfamiliar emotions and I-helped-someone-get-away-with-murder. That’s the strangest thing; she doesn’t feel guilty. She should, or at least she thinks she should, but she doesn’t. It feels like the right thing.

And maybe Natalya isn’t even real. Maybe it was all a dream. However, that isn’t true. She’s sure of that much. It’s important that she and Alin helped Natalya, just as it is important that Natalya helped her. That they both stick up for each other, for Alin, and for the other people Natalya mentioned, after Alin had promptly disappeared after sharing his name. Olympe feels like she knows them. Like they’re just a thought away.

It scares her a little. She’s never felt connected to many people before. She has always lived a rather lonely life, even when she was little.

“I’m sorry you had to do that,” the now familiar voice of Natalya says, softly. Opening her eyes, Olympe looks at the woman’s slightly blurry face and shakes her head.

“I didn’t have to.”

 Natalya sighs. “Still. You never asked for this.”

“Neither did you.” Olympe puts her glasses on. “I should thank you too, for what you did the other day.”

Natalya looks quite haggard, her light hair loose and messy, her eyes tired. It paints a sharp contrast with the soft colors of Olympe’s bedroom. She nods once.

“Where are you now?” Olympe asks after a long moment of silence.

“Poland. I’ll receive new orders soon.”

Orders to kill someone else. Olympe nods quietly. She feels tired. More tired than she should be.

As tired as Natalya looks.

“Your house is nice,” Natalya says.

“Thank you. When you are good at it, professional poker really does pay quite well.” She doesn’t say that it has never felt like a home to her.

Natalya whistles between her teeth, and Olympe smiles. Maybe this isn’t so bad. Maybe they can make this, whatever it is, into something worthwhile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ALSO FEATURING  
> Helena Rodia – Ancient Greece  
> Huang Paredes – Macau  
> Lars Oxenstierna – Ladonia  
> Luca Rotaru – Moldova  
> Mei Hui Li – Taiwan  
> Peter Oxenstierna – Sealand  
> Riley Greenwood – New Zealand  
> Stefan Borisov – Bulgaria  
> Torbjörn Oxenstierna-Väinämöinen – Sweden  
> Yao Wang – China
> 
> (plus cameo for Seborga - Marcello - but he doesn't really count)
> 
> New Zealand being Riley has nothing to do with Riley Blue from Sense8. It's just my go-to name for New Zealand. They're agender in this story.
> 
> Yeah China's cluster is the ancients. There aren't eight canon ancients, but I imagined it would be, China, Ancient Greece, Ancient Egypt, the Roman Empire, Germania, and then, like, Scandinavia and uh... idk honestly. Maybe Mongolia, actually. Or Persia.


	3. a waste of hallucination

There are more emails in Eduard’s inbox, and they all say the same thing.

‘STOP’. Nothing more, nothing less. No fancy letters, just Arial ten-point, not even bolded.

Eduard is slowly beginning to freak out a little. No one else in his network has gotten any emails like this. Maybe that’s just a matter of time. But he doesn’t think so. Things like these, it’s usually all or nothing, all at once. What to do, what to do?

Trying to figure out the sender yielded exactly zero results, which in itself is a reason for worry and so only added to Eduard’s frustration.

He’s been cleaning his glasses with the edge of his sweater in a nearly obsessive way for almost ten minutes now, even though they were perfectly clean before, for lack of any ideas.

“Hey,” says a woman’s voice, “stop worrying for a minute, okay?”

Eduard quickly puts his glasses back on to look at his visitor.

“You must be Angélique,” he says, matching her to David’s description. She smiles, nodding.

“You must be Eduard.” Looking around the room, she asks, “Do you run a secret organization or something?”

Eduard chuckles. “I don’t run it, no. Most of those are broken in some way,” he explains, referring to the small forest of computer monitors on various surfaces. When his parents still lived in this house, this used to be the guest room. Eduard has found better use for it as what he likes to call his headquarters. He doesn’t like his work to interfere with his everyday life and so doesn’t have a fixed computer in the living room.

“Broken?” Angélique echoes, walking over to the nearest monitor and peering at it intently. “This one too?”

“Hm-hm.”

“May I take a look at it?”

He must look surprised, because she indignantly adds, “Just because I’m from Africa doesn’t mean I don’t know how electronics work!”

“What – no, you just don’t really seem like the type of person for it, that’s all. You seem more like an outdoorsy type, but I stand corrected.”

“I’m the type of person for lots of things,” she tells him, tying her curly hair back with a piece of red string. “But I studied mechanics.”

* * *

In an attempt to get into the car first, Peter all but pushes Lars over. The boy falls into Torbjörn and clamps down on his father’s thigh with both arms even as Torbjörn briskly marches over to the car to berate Peter.

Tuomi, already safely in the passenger seat, watches his family in amusement in the low light. They’re going to visit some of Torbjörn’s cousins further south for the holidays, as is custom. It’s good to be somewhere with more daylight hours for a while, especially for the boys. Two hours of sunlight per day isn’t going to cut it; even their array of lamps can only do so much.

Peter has climbed into his seat and is making himself look very guilty by attempting to look innocent while Torbjörn fastens his seatbelt, leaning over Lars.

“’Kay,” says Torbjörn when he is in the car as well, having adjusted the seat to his height.

“Yes!” Tuomi agrees. “Do you have everything you need, boys?” He looks over the back of his seat and sees them both nod, Lars sulkily. Then he glances at his husband, who quirks a nearly unnoticeable smile and nods as well. Tuomi smiles.

“Great. Let’s go.”

The car starts its long journey through the snow.

* * *

“Hey-hey!” David exclaims, lifting his little sister up and swinging her around.

Ashleigh struggles in his grip, protesting that she’s way too old to be picked up and she is to be put down _immediately, you barbarian_!

“Barbarian?” David echoes, amused, after he has honored her demand and she has both feet on the ground again.

“Did I say that? Ugh, I must’ve picked it up from Josh.” She wrinkles her nose, and David laughs. It can’t be denied that his brother says strange things sometimes.

“Where is he, anyway?”

Ashleigh shrugs. “Dunno.”

As if on cue – and actually, David thinks, he might just have been waiting behind the door for the right moment to enter the room – Joshua comes in.

“My favorite brother!” he enunciates, with a sweeping arm gesture to accompany it, as if he were wearing a cape.

“I’m your only brother,” David says, rolling his eyes at Ashleigh covertly. If Joshua doesn’t get into professional acting, David will eat his shoes. His latest phase seems to involve pretending he is Count Dracula or something. David’s mind, somehow indignantly, provides the information that Dracula was based on a Romanian folk hero who was not a vampire, thank you very much.

“My favorite sibling!” Joshua exclaims in the exact same tone. Ashleigh rolls her eyes back at David, and Joshua adds, “I saw that!”

Ashleigh blows him a raspberry and disappears back outside.

“Hey, Josh, merry early Christmas.”

“Yeah, you too, Dave.” He seems to shrug off his persona now that the introduction is done. “Do you really have to work when it’s actually Christmas?”

“Well, people don’t stop getting hurt just because it’s the holidays. And I’m here now, aren’t I?”

Joshua shrugs, effectively reflecting David’s own feelings on the matter. It’s always been his dream to be a doctor, and he does love helping people, and of course he has known forever that he would have to work long hours, but that doesn’t mean he likes not being able to attend his family’s annual Christmas barbeque. Riley jokingly said he could send someone from his Cluster in his place – Riley has taken very well to the whole Sensate thing – and while the idea was interesting, David doesn’t think it works quite like that.

Riley also said they had a brilliant subject for their new book. David fears it is him. Well, he supposes the whole situation does make for a good story.

“Boys, you better come outside!” he hears his father yell from the yard. David doesn’t think his father is ever going to stop calling him boy, even though he’s closer to thirty than twenty now.

“Hey, race you,” he tells Joshua, and they’re off.

* * *

“Good afternoon,” Stefan Borisov greets, standing up to shake Alin’s hand. “Take a seat.”

Alin does, smoothing his hair down self-consciously. They agreed to meet in the city, but the café is just this tiny bit too expensive, so that he stands out a lot despite wearing his best clothes. If there’s one thing Alin tries not to do, it’s stand out – he would love to, but it only leads to trouble. It cheers him up a bit that his companion doesn’t look entirely in his element either. Then again, maybe he’s having second thoughts about hiring a thief, even if Alin has never been convicted. He can usually talk his way out of trouble.

Now, though, he’s not entirely sure what to say.

“So, uhm, Mr Rotaru—”

“Please call me Alin.” Oh no, that was rude.

“Okay, but then I’m Stefan. We can’t be far apart in age anyway.”

“I’m twenty-seven,” Alin says absently.

“See, I’m twenty-nine. But, anyway. Alin. I had a contract drawn up, so we can go over that, and if you want we can take a look at the house… Just so you know what you’re getting yourself into.”

Alin doesn’t really care what he’s getting himself into, as long as it pays well. The address Stefan sent him is on the outskirts of the city. It’s a bit far to bike to in the current weather, so Alin hasn’t done that, but he thinks it must be one of the newer houses there. Maybe it belonged to Stefan’s wealthy aunt or something like that. The kind of aunt that has twenty cats.

“Alin.”

His accent gives the name an interesting lilt. Alin wonders where he’s from. His name seems Bulgarian.

“Yes, what?”

Stefan gestures at a waiter standing next to the table, and Alin hastily orders a cup of tea, mentally berating himself.

There is someone else standing behind Stefan. In a thin blue t-shirt, he is hilariously underdressed for the cold weather they’ve been having, but he doesn’t seem bothered, looking around the café curiously. He holds Alin’s gaze when he meets it, and for some reason it sends tingles up his spine. Stefan doesn’t seem to notice him. Alin tries to focus elsewhere.

Elsewhere being the heap of paper Stefan has just produced from his backpack.

“Uh, don’t worry,” he says, looking through the sheets. “It’s in here somewhere. I’m pretty sure. I’m sorry, everything’s kind of a mess.”

“No problem,” Alin replies. When he glances up, the other man is peering over Stefan’s shoulder, his choppy hair nearly touching the man’s cheekbone. Weirdly enough, Stefan still doesn’t notice. Alin looks around – no one else seems to think there’s something strange going on either.

And then the man looks at Alin and says, “Well, one of us is gonna have to have his hair cut.”

Stefan doesn’t give the slightest indication that he’s heard him, and Alin has an unbidden flashback to that weird maybe-daydream he had about a casino in Las Vegas where nobody noticed him except for Olympe – but if that was a daydream, then Kiev was a daydream, and the beach was a daydream, and then this Asian man must also be a daydream.

But then who’s to say Stefan is real at all?

“Oh, here it is,” Stefan says, completely unperturbed. He slides most of the paper back into his bag and turns one sheet to Alin. The invisible man walks around the table until he’s next to Alin, who stares up at him in disbelief.

“Alin?”

“Uhm, just— Look, the waiter.”

The waiter does, in fact, arrive with Alin’s tea and Stefan’s coffee. Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t take the invisible man’s order.

Taking a deep breath and tucking his hair behind his ear, Alin decides to focus on that contract. He actually manages very well – it’s a decent thing, he thinks, and the pay doesn’t seem bad for the work he will be doing.

Stefan also offers some tidbits about himself – he’s not married, works as a consultant, is indeed originally from Bulgaria, and has lived in Romania for almost twelve years now.

“He seems like a good guy,” Invisible Man comments, sounding genuinely surprised. Alin grits his teeth.

“So, what do you think?” Stefan asks, having finished his inspection of Alin’s résumé. He puts his elbows on the table and laces his fingers underneath his face, resting his chin on them. He’s biting his lip.

Alin doesn’t say what he thinks, which is A) I’m going fucking mental, and B) you look cute like that.

Instead, he replies, “I think it’d be a very good opportunity.”

Stefan smiles slowly. “Oh, that is great to hear,” he says.

“You know,” says the invisible man, “I can’t decide if this is a really bad first date or just a weird business meeting.” Alin glares at him, and he smiles crookedly. “Never mind me, I’ll be off. If you see Angélique, tell her Eduard wants to know her last name.”

“Are you okay?” Stefan asks. It is only then that Alin realizes he’s been clenching the edge of the table so hard that his nails have left imprints in the wood.

“Fine, yeah. I’m – fine.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that? Sounded sort of Chinese?”

“I’m fine,” Alin repeats, louder. “Nothing wrong with me.”

He unfurls his painful fingers and tries not to shake when Stefan hands him a pen.

* * *

Eduard is back to stressing over the mysterious emails.

He’s narrowed the possible senders down quite a bit, but he’s only realizing now how many illegal things he’s gotten caught up in with his hacking work. It never seems like a big deal when he’s doing it – always seems sort of like a game, and definitely like something good, but he knows, and has always known, there can be serious repercussions. From both sides of the law. The only good thing about this, he thinks, is that at least it’s not the government that wants to see him stop.

Maybe that’s not a good thing.

One slipup, though, one email sent with a traceable sender, that’s all he needs. Or one with a virus, even – he’s actually taken to opening the emails on a different computer, one with no important files, and if it keeps up, he’ll set up a different network, but viruses are usually traceable.

For now, he sighs and reads his list again. Useless.

* * *

Dangling her feet over the edge of the tall bed, Angélique watches David at work. He hasn’t noticed her yet. She’s waiting until he’s not busy to talk to him. Hoping she doesn’t disappear back home before he is. Although – she still is back home right now. If she concentrates, she can still smell the sea through the antiseptic, hear the deafening birdcalls from the forest over the machines, feel the breeze lift her hair from her eyes. It’s a strange sensation.

Angélique has respect for doctors. She wanted to be a nurse for quite a long time, after having spent so much time in the hospital when her mother was sick. She’s glad she didn’t choose to, in the end. She doesn’t think she could be happy in a place like this.

David rushes to and fro, but at last, he breaks off to the break room. Angélique follows.

The room is small, but the windows are open, letting in a breeze not unlike the wind on La Digue. David stalks straight outside. Angélique still follows.

He turns around in the shade, flashes a bright smile.

“Hey,” he says, “sorry I couldn’t talk to you earlier.”

So he had noticed.

“No problem. You were busy.” Angélique looks up at the moon. “Night shifts must be hard.”

“You get used to it,” he says. “But welcome to Australia! Ever been here?”

She huffs a laugh. “I have never left the Seychelles. I don’t think I could even afford a trip to Madagascar.”

“Ah, well, it’s more fun that way. Everything is new.” He brushes his hair back from his face. The moonlight catches on a scratchy scar on his left cheekbone. “Seen anyone else?”

“Hm, yeah, I fixed Eduard’s computer screen.”

“Fixed— Multitalented, are you?”

“Bit of a Jack of all trades.” She pushes the toe of her flip-flop against the ground. “No good at surfing, though.”

“So you—” Someone calls his name from inside the hospital, and he glances up sharply. They yell something else, and he sighs. “Sorry, they need me inside. I gotta— You know what, next time I’ll give you my phone number, promise.”

Angélique nods and watches him go through the familiar trees behind her house.

* * *

“Torbjörn says he’s worried about you,” Christian says in a way that is too off-handed to be casual. None of the Oxenstiernas are particularly skilled actors, Tuomi thinks, and Christian is no exception.

“Does he?” he asks nonetheless, because he does want to know.

Torbjörn’s cousin turns more to Tuomi, obviously gearing up for a monologue.

“He says you’ve been acting strange, that you started talking Estonian and then insisted you didn’t, and apparently you speak Chinese in your sleep, and also that you’ve been staring into thin air an awful lot, and something about you being afraid of him? I think he’s worried about the, you know, nightmares and stuff coming back.”

Hm, that was short, for Christian. Tuomi didn’t know about the Chinese.

He nods, leaning against the dining table. He really ought to tell Torbjörn what’s going on. It’s just that – they share the trait that they can never seem to find the right words for important things, so he doesn’t know how. And what about their sons? How could he possibly explain this to them?

“It’s not that,” he tells Christian. “That’s gone. And if I can help it, will stay gone.”

“But can you?” He smiles in an uncharacteristic, almost melancholic way, but then the doorbell rings and he bounces up. “Ah, that’ll be Sigurd! Back in a tick!”

With a smile, Tuomi watches him go. It’s no wonder that Christian is the boys’ favorite uncle. He’s practically a kid himself. Well, technically, he’s their cousin too, of course, but neither Tuomi nor Torbjörn has any siblings, so it’s the closest thing they’re going to get.

There’s an exchange of greetings in the hallway, and then Christian drags his neighbor-slash-best-friend into the living room, chattering over his shoulder all the while, to – oh, that is Sigurd’s brother. Tuomi hasn’t seen him in ages! He’s grown up!

“Hello, Tuomi,” says Sigurd, wrenching his shoulder from Christian’s grip. “It’s nice to see you again.”

Tuomi stands up to shake the man’s hand. He likes Sigurd. They get along quite well.

“And maybe you recognized my brother already,” Sigurd adds, motioning at the man behind him.

Tuomi shakes his hand too, smiling. “Egil, right? I haven’t seen you since you were a teenager.”

Egil smiles shyly, not meeting Tuomi’s eye.

“Good to see you,” he says. He looks up, and a shiver runs down Tuomi’s spine. They hold each other’s gaze for a suspended, nearly shocked moment, but it’s gone in a heartbeat, and Egil looks away again, retracting his hand and stepping back. He glances beside himself, shaking his head in a dismissive way. Tuomi swallows. He’s not sure what just happened.

* * *

Olympe is feeling stressed, and she can’t put her finger on why. Which, of course, is only making her feel more stressed.

She’s bent four hairpins out of shape already and completely demolished a deck of cards. At the moment, she’s working her way through the cardboard box of her cereal. This is completely unlike her; she’s calm, collected. Always has been. And in her profession, being fidgety is not exactly an advantage.

When she glances at her phone, she sees that she has a whole bunch of emails. They have no senders. She opens her mailbox, and there is nothing there.

With a rip, the cereal box falls apart. Olympe swears sharply in French.

She gets up, leaving her phone on the shiny kitchen table, and paces to the bathroom. Certainly, she will feel better after a shower.

She turns the temperature far too high and draws a complicated web on the foggy glass of the shower wall. It has eight nodes. She considers this and draws a ninth in a different shape, then two more – one in the same shape as the ninth and another different one. After a moment, she wipes the whole thing away and turns to rinse the conditioner from her hair.

Olympe exits the shower in a waft of sweet-scented steam, a towel wrapped around herself. She wipes the condensation from the mirror and startles so badly that she hits her arm against the faucet. There is a _man_ where she should be.

But there isn’t. That’s impossible. There is only her. Olympe picks up her glasses with trembling fingers, wiping them clean hastily and putting them on.

He’s in the mirror, but he’s not in the room. His glasses aren’t foggy at all. He has blond hair, a lighter shade than hers. Olympe clutches her towel and whips her head back and forth. The man looks startled to see her too. Finally, she reaches towards the mirror slowly, and the man does the same. She touches nothing but cold glass, but still jerks back as if she’s been burned.

He does too.

Olympe rushes out of the bathroom, heart pounding like she’s run a marathon.

* * *

She’s Giedrė Astrauskaitė at the moment, in Warsaw for business. Technically, only one part of that is a lie, Natalya thinks as she walks through the drab snow. It’s been exceptionally cold this year. She used to love the cold, and there is a vague longing somewhere in her mind to go skating, but it never reaches fruition, because she knows she can’t anyway. Nowadays, cold weather usually just poses a danger or obstruction. Footsteps in the snow, slippery streets, too many layers to move comfortably.

Giedrė Astrauskaitė stalks into the hotel lobby with confidence. She’s important, that’s all Natalya has on her. She doesn’t need more than that.

Maybe Olympe can come up with something, should the need arise.

Natalya shakes her head and looks at the endless curve of reflections in the mirrored walls of the elevator. Somewhere in the distance, she thinks one of the reflections might not be her at all, might be dark-haired and brown-skinned where she is blonde and pale. She shakes her head again. Distractions like these aren’t good.

Having reached her floor, she exits the elevator and walks through the narrow hall to her room. She steps through the door and immediately notices something is wrong. It’s dark, and it smells wrong – musty and old where it should be that cleaning supply smell that seems to be a universal for hotels all over Eastern Europe. When Natalya tries to flick the light on, she’s only mildly surprised when the switch isn’t there. There are cold bricks instead.

Behind her, rather than the hotel room door, she finds an open trapdoor. A little bit of light spills into the room, and since Natalya doesn’t see any other option, she climbs down the ladder, which rests on musty, thick red carpet in a narrow hall with multiple doors opening into it. It must be the second, maybe even the third floor. The only exit is a stairwell at the end of the hall.

Despite herself, she shivers. This house, wherever this is, reminds her of the house she grew up in, with its corridors that seemed endless when she was small, the stern portraits gazing down at her family. She has wondered what’s become of the place often, years ago. She usually doesn’t think about it anymore. That girl no longer exists.

“Oh, it’s you.”

Natalya snaps out of her thoughts and snaps her knife out of her sleeve. Alin, because of course it’s fucking Alin, recoils, holding his hands up. She slides her knife back. It’s not as if it will do any good. Probably.

“Where am I now?” she asks him.

He glances over his shoulder, then replies, “Just outside Bucharest. I’m gonna work here.” He actually seems proud.

Natalya raises her eyebrows at their surroundings. “What will you be doing? I’m pretty sure there’s fucking bats in the attic.”

“Oh, really? I love bats!”

Of course he does.

“No, seriously. But I’m gonna help clean it and stuff.” He glances over his shoulder again. “I’m, just— My boss is in there, I don’t want him to hear me. No need to let him know I’m hallucinating about beautiful assassins.”

“Don’t bother. I’m not into guys.” That might just have been the most personal information she’s shared in eight years. And she just blurted it out.

“Well, that’s a waste of hallucination, then.”

Honestly, Natalya doesn’t think hallucinations are the explanation for what’s going on with them. She doesn’t want to think it, anyway.

A dark-haired man, about the same height as Alin, walks into the hallway. He doesn’t seem to notice Natalya.

“So,” he says, “still interested?” There’s spider web in his hair.

“I definitely am,” Alin says. His hand twitches as if he wants to reach for the web.

“Great. Let’s go somewhere else. I think I’m allergic to something.”

With a last glance at Natalya, Alin follows him to the stairs.

* * *

“Thank you!” Leon bows, grinning, then waves and exits the small stage at a leisurely pace, his guitar flung around his back. That felt good. That felt really good. There ought to be more nights like this one.

In the kitchen, Mei hugs him briefly, but then urges him to put his guitar away and go back to his regular job. Leon sighs and does so.

It’s been a dream of his for as long as he remembers to be a musician. And he is, technically; he plays several instruments and his singing is good, but as a career, it has never quite lifted off. Never more than small things at the restaurant or with the neighboring businesses. So Leon washes his hands and takes over his sister’s kitchen shift, because he does need income, and he loves cooking too, so it isn’t a hardship.

He only hopes Yao will refrain from looking over his shoulder even when he’s not in the room this time, because it makes him anxious. Being a Sensate has its downsides when you live with another one who also happens to be your boss.

At the end of his shift, Leon cleans his area of the kitchen, then quickly goes to his bedroom upstairs.

“Hey Leon,” says Eduard, sitting on his desk chair with his laptop open. Leon smiles, puts his guitar in its stand, and looks over the man’s shoulder. There’s a list on the screen. A list of names.

  * Clarke, David Oliver; Coffs Harbour, Australia
  * Li, Leon?; Aberdeen, Hong Kong
  * Mets, Eduard; Tallinn, Estonia
  * Väinämöinen-Oxenstierna, Tuomas Kalle; Övertorneå, Sweden
  * ??, Alin; Bucharest?, Romania
  * ??, Angélique; ??, Seychelles
  * ??, Natalya; ??
  * ??; ??



“Neat,” Leon says. The guy really does have skill with computers, if he found all that. “I guess you couldn’t find me?”

Eduard shakes his head. “I was reading that it’s common in Hong Kong to pick an English name for yourself, so I’d wager it’s probably that?”

“Partly.” Leon sits down on his desk. “I’ve been calling myself Leon for ages. I liked lions when I was small, but I couldn’t spell for shit.” With a grin, he adds, “My sister used to call herself Kitty, but she decided a couple years ago she didn’t like it anymore, so now she’s just Mei.”

“So your official name is not Leon?”

He sighs, taps his fingers against the edge of the desk. “You’re gonna find me as Li Jing Fei.”

Eduard poises his fingers over the keyboard, then stills. “Okay, I don’t know how I know this, because believe me when I say I know nothing about Chinese names, but that is—”

“A female name. Yes, it is.” Leon brushes his hair behind his ear, bites his cheek, and takes a deep breath. “I’m transgender. However, I can’t, like, legally change my gender without full surgery, which I can’t really afford. So I’m kind of, stuck, with that name.”

“I see.” Eduard types the name, and sure enough, Leon pops up. He looks away. “That sucks.”

Leon grimaces. That’s putting it mildly, but even with the connection they have, he doesn’t expect Eduard to understand what it’s like to be afraid to show people your passport, or nearly want to cry every time you receive a letter addressed to ‘Miss Li’. On some days, he has Mei open those for him.

“I’m lucky, though, in a way.” He kicks his feet out. “I feel comfortable with at least the way my body is most of the time, nowadays, so that’s good. And I’m glad my uncle and my sister do support me. And you seem fine with it.”

“Of course I am,” he says, in almost off-handed way, as if he’s confused Leon should even mention it.

The grimace turns into a genuine smile, and Leon watches Eduard remove the question mark from behind his name.

“Your birthday is March 7.”

“Yeah?”

“That’s mine, too. It’s Tuomi’s and David’s too, and I’m willing to bet on the others’. We’re all the exact same age.”

Leon tilts his head. “Freaky.”

“Hey, did you grow up in Aberdeen?”

“Hm, no, I’m from Hong Kong Island. Mei and I moved in with our uncle after our parents died.” He rests his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands. That’s a lot of personal information he just shared, but he doesn’t feel as jittery, as apprehensive, as he normally does. He knows with certainty that Eduard won’t pass judgment on him, and doesn’t think the other Cluster members will. They’re… Sort of one person, in the end. Maybe that’s the reason his uncle is as unconventional as he is, too.

Wow, weird.

“You’ve always lived in Tallinn?”

Eduard nods, smiling. Leon is overcome by a sensation that feels like home, though not like his, like cold winters and sea wind and unfamiliar-yet-familiar sweet perfume and savory warm dishes.

“Oh,” Eduard breathes. “Oh, that was weird.”

“It was nice.” Leon smiles at him. “I think you’re, like, a lucky man.”

“I suppose I am.”

* * *

Tuomi jolts awake and is instantly out of bed, army training kicking in immediately. There’s a person next to his bed. It’s not a member of his Cluster, somehow he knows this instinctively.

“Oh,” says a soft, familiar voice.

“Oh,” Tuomi repeats. On the bed, Torbjörn snorts and moves a little. Tuomi gestures to the door and leads the way outside. He doesn’t want to wake his husband. Egil follows.

On the landing of Christian’s house, they lean against opposite walls, silence heavy between them until Tuomi yawns.

“You’re a Sensate, too,” Egil says in a low voice. It seems awfully loud in the silence of the sleeping house. Distantly, Tuomi wonders if Egil’s voice would echo if they were in a large room, considering he’s not _actually_ there and all that.

“I am. _You_ are. Why— How are you able to visit me? I thought… I thought only my own Cluster members could do that.”

Egil plucks at the hem of his sweater. “We looked each other in the eye. That’s, like, that sets up a connection. Other people in my Cluster have it.” He tilts his head. “One does.”

“Oh, wow. Cool.” He sees Egil’s eyes flick to his empty left sleeve, flapping against his side. A realization hits him. “Last time you saw me, my arm was still whole.”

Shifting uncomfortably, Egil nods. “Last time I saw you, you were in the army and you liked heavy metal. Now you’re married with kids. It’s quite a change.”

“I still like heavy metal,” Tuomi says, feeling slightly indignant. Like these things negate each other! “Besides, you had your hair dyed purple last time I saw you.”

“Okay, okay.” He sighs. “I was just thinking that you seemed distracted today. I guess your Cluster was birthed recently? It’s a weird thing, in the beginning.”

“It is.” It’s strange to think Egil, who’s, what, five or six years younger than him, has more experience with… Anything, really, than Tuomi. It doesn’t seem right, competes with the image Tuomi still has of him as a gangly teenager with his hair in unusual colors. But he is a man now, no denying it. It frightens Tuomi sometimes that things like that will happen to his sons someday, too.

“Heya, Tuomi,” says a sleepy voice from the end of the hall. Both of them snap their heads up to Christian, whose hair is more of a mess than usual and who, with his glasses on, looks quite a lot like Torbjörn. “Couldn’t wait to check out the presents or what?”

With a glance at Egil, who’s smoothing his hair down, Tuomi answers, “Couldn’t sleep.”

“Nightmare?” There’s concern in his voice suddenly. Tuomi smiles.

“No, don’t worry. I’m—” He looks at Egil again, but the man seems to be caught up with staring at Christian. _Oh_ , Tuomi thinks in faint amusement. “I’m gonna go back to sleep. See you tomorrow.”

“Night,” Christian says. He clasps Tuomi’s shoulder when he passes on his way to the stairs. Egil promptly disappears.

* * *

It’s Christmas, and David is working. One man stung by bees, two kids with heatstroke, plenty of second-degree burns – he’s busy, and the day has barely started. David wonders how – _if_ – the other members of his Cluster celebrate Christmas. He has a brief daydream about them all being together at some point, exchanging gifts like his family does. He’s sure he can almost see the last unknown member, can hear their name, and it must be somewhere in his mind, for sure, but then there’s someone who’s been attacked by a seagull and he diverts his attention.

There has been a lot of activity around the hospital lately. Different activity than usual, that is. Research is working on something big, if the reports from his colleagues are to be believed. It can’t be that big, if it’s situated in Coffs _bloody_ Harbour, David thinks. Halfway between Brisbane and Sydney, most people tend to overlook his town. Nevertheless, the whole thing is very hush-hush, and gossip is abundant.

Riley, ever the fantast, has spun wild stories about illegal drug trade and human experiments. David has learned very long ago not to take Riley too seriously. Luckily, Riley never takes themselves too seriously either.

“Clarke, we’ve got another heatstroke!”

David spins on his heel and marches over, while he enjoys a wave of cool, crisp winter air rushing around him.

* * *

Somewhere outside Warsaw, Natalya checks into a nondescript hotel and falls facedown on her bed for the night. It’s softer than it has any right to be, but she doesn’t bother looking up to see where she’s appeared this time. She just wants to sleep.

 _Fire_.

Voices calling her name – her real name, the one she hasn’t used in years. Knives. Black. Dancing – spinning and spinning and then there’s more fire; shadows where there shouldn’t be, far too many shadows. She’s falling and running—

“ _Wake up_.”

She has her knife pressed against a slim throat and her hand buried in curly dark hair. Frightened eyes stare at her in the gloom.

But, no, not frightened. Concerned. Natalya lets go and sags on the mattress, which is still nowhere as lumpy and uncomfortable as it ought to be. There’s a sound like the sea ringing in her ears, and the air smells fresh.

“That didn’t look nice,” says the woman now sitting near the foot of the bed. She is rubbing her throat.

Natalya shakes her head, scanning the room as she does. The only exits are a door and an open window. They’re at ground level.

“I’m Angélique,” the woman offers.

“Nas— Natalya.” Natalya. That’s who she is. No one else.

“Right, yeah, Eduard mentioned you.” Angélique twirls a strand of hair around her finger. “Do you want some water or something? Not sure it would work, to be honest, but…”

For some reason, Natalya accepts the offer.

And so the two of them sit outside on the porch of the house where, Angélique explains, she lives with her father, and watch the sun come up over the sea in a blaze of red, orange, and purple while Natalya drinks water that tastes rather bland. Secondhand, like she’s not the one tasting it.

“You’re not crazy, you know,” Angélique says at some point. She smiles at Natalya, eyes crinkling. “You’re just a Sensate.”

So she was wrong, Natalya thinks later. She is _not_ just Natalya. She is something else, something bigger entirely.

She’s a we.

* * *

There is good news and there is bad news. The good news is that Eduard has figured out whom the emails are from. The bad news is that… That Eduard has figured out whom the emails are from.

He tries to reason with himself that this balances out, that his find is neutral, but it’s not working. The scales are definitely tipping towards ‘bad news’.

There is a company, he remembers with clarity, that he and one other person from his hacktivist network tackled early in the year. International, shady, just their thing. It’d been simple, even when his accomplice had been forced to drop out. Website down, very hard to recover. All in a day’s work, easily forgotten.

However, they’ve grown, like an ugly caterpillar into a _really_ ugly butterfly, and, like butterflies, they remember Eduard disrupting the peace around their parts when they were still small.

Okay, so maybe that’s a bad analogy, because Eduard doesn’t think butterflies will ever do him any harm and there’s a chance these guys will, but his point stands.

Definitely bad news.

They’re called InGRes, International Genetics Research, but genetics research seems to be the last thing that they do.

“They’re called what?” David asks, standing behind Eduard and looking over his shoulder. Eduard leans aside so he can read the page. The man and his overwhelming smell of antiseptic crowd into Eduard’s space, but he doesn’t mind even slightly.

David breathes in sharply through his nose, then says, “Mate, you have to see this,” and drags Eduard out of his chair.

It’s weird to be in the middle of a busy room in your pajamas and have no one look askance at you, even in a hospital. But Eduard doesn’t have much time to dwell, because David rushes through corridors and then points at a large box, with a meaningful expression.

 InGRes, the label proclaims.

“What’s that doing here?” Eduard asks.

“I don’t know. Tons of these things have been going up to Research & Development the past two weeks or so.”

A weird coincidence, surely. Nevertheless, David and Eduard look at each other and feel the same sense of worry. Who it came from, they don’t know, but it bounces off their shared consciousness and spirals around in their minds.

“Well, Riley’s gonna love this,” David says eventually.

* * *

Christmas is a huge thing in the Oxenstierna-Väinämöinen household. Both Tuomi and Torbjörn have brought their own traditions into their marriage, and with the added company of Christian, Sigurd and Egil, it’s become an amalgamation of festive sweaters and presents and baked goods and general merrymaking. Tuomi loves it.

He doesn’t, however, miss the glances that Torbjörn keeps shooting his way, looks edged with worry that make him feel guilty. He hates to worry anyone, and especially on Christmas.

And for some reason, there’s worry gnawing at his own mind too. It makes him fidget restlessly with the fingers of his prosthetic, which he knows will draw his husband’s attention and make him worry more, and so he decides that enough is enough and declines an offer to have a snowball fight in favor of dragging Torbjörn to the guestroom and pushing him down on the edge of the bed.

“Not that I mind—” the man begins, and Tuomi laughs and kisses him silent.

“I wouldn’t mind either,” he mutters against his lips, leaning into the warmth of Torbjörn’s familiar, large hands on his back. “But I need to tell you something.”

Torbjörn pulls back a little. Tuomi swallows and takes a deep breath, stands up straight. Words, words…

“You can tell me anything, y’know that.”

“I’m—” A Sensate? Psychic? Possibly not human? “Not… Alone, in my head. I, there’s… Other people.”

His husband looks taken aback.

“Okay, no, that’s not what I meant. Or it is, it’s exactly what I meant, but it sounds wrong. Look, a few days ago, when I woke up and I was scared of you or something?”

“Yes?”

“That wasn’t me. I would never be afraid of you, you know that. That was David. He’s from Australia, uhm… God, Torbjörn, I love you, and I don’t want you to worry about me when there’s nothing to be worried about. This is good, what’s happening to me. It’s so fucking amazing. I wish you could see it. I’ve got this whole new world right in my head. I’m in Australia and in Hong Kong at this very moment. I can stretch out my hands and touch two continents.”

Torbjörn stands up slowly and stops Tuomi’s pacing by putting his hands on his shoulders, then one around his jaw.

“And I understand you’re worried, of course, and I’m probably not helping.” He takes a deep breath. “The man you talked on the phone. That was Eduard. I’m connected to him, and that’s why I spoke Estonian suddenly, and the Chinese in my sleep means I’m probably dreaming about Leon or something, and _Egil_ _has the same thing_! He’s had it for even longer than—”

“I believe you,” Torbjörn says.

“What?”

“Said I believe you.”

“You… Do? I wouldn’t believe a damn word I just said if I were you.”

A thumb strokes Tuomi’s cheek.

“I know you, Tuomi. This’s all you. You’re not lying.”

“That doesn’t necessarily mean I’m telling the truth.” Tuomi searches his husband’s light eyes. “You understand I’m telling you I’m basically psychic.”

“I do.”

“And you believe it.”

“D’you want me not to?”

“I, no, but fuck me, why? I would’ve at least asked for proof or something.”

“Then prove it, if y’want.”

Egil says, “Tell him if he looks outside he will see Peter sitting on top of Christian and shoving snow into his coat.” A pause. “Also, Sigurd is showing snow into Christian’s pants. I’m gonna help him.”

Tuomi relays the message, and Torbjörn looks while he sinks down on the bed.

“You were right,” Torbjörn says, squatting in front of him. His hands rest lightly on Tuomi’s knees.

“Egil was.”

“You’ll have to tell me more later.” He kisses Tuomi, lingering for a few silent seconds, then stands up straight. “Think I’d like to shove snow into Christian’s boots. You coming?”

“I— Yes, of course. Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

* * *

Natalya catches flashes of Christmas celebrations around the world. She hears terrible singing outside a hospital underneath a relentless sun, vaguely tastes takeaway pizza, listens in on a bit of mass while tropical birds do their best to out-scream the priest. She feels an overwhelming surge of love coming from a cold apartment, smells something that reminds her of home and watches children tackle a laughing man into a snowbank.

It’s another day before she needs to relocate. Natalya looks around at her gray-tinted hotel room, and feels altogether too small.

She pulls her hair out of its bun and, for the first time in years, lets herself cry.

* * *

A hollow feeling has made itself at home in Olympe’s chest. She has been staring at the wall of her bedroom ever since she woke up, feeling like she could cry. But she doesn’t. There is no reason to. It’s Christmas, after all. Later today, there will be a gathering with some of her acquaintances from the poker circuit, which will be nice.

Nevertheless, maybe it’s time to go home, she thinks. Certainly, it will be colder in Monaco than it is here, surrounded by desert as she is, but she misses the sea.

A broken sob sounds. It wasn’t Olympe.

“Oh,” she breathes, because her surroundings have changed, and there is Natalya, hiding her face in her hands.

“Don’t,” the woman says sharply, but Olympe can feel waves of loneliness rolling of her, and she can’t stand it.

You don’t become an assassin because you like killing people so much. If that is the case, you become a serial killer. There is a reason that Natalya is what she is. Is _who_ she is. She cannot pretend to know or understand that, but Olympe knows a little bit about loneliness, and is certain that this connection between them should be used for good, used to help one another, so she presses herself next to Natalya wordlessly and tries to project warmth.

She tries to remember specific details about her home, small things that make her happy, and hopes she can share some of that with the other woman.

Natalya doesn’t look up or say anything, but she rests her head half on Olympe’s shoulder and unfurls slightly.

Olympe will take it, because the pit in her chest seems shallower than it was.

* * *

Alin is in love.

And Luca is laughing at him.

“Quit that!”

Luca laughs louder, and much as Alin loves making his little brother happy, he doesn’t appreciate being laughed _at_.

“Lu-ca!” Okay, so he sounds whiny.

“You’re in love with a _house_ , Alin! That’s so stupid!”

“You’re stupid,” he replies, eloquently. “It’s a great house.” It _is_ , at that. Stefan Borisov has inherited an old building, a fucking mansion, really. It’s exactly the sort of place Alin would want to live in if he could, all interesting light and sprawling rooms, but as it is, he will be happy to work at cleaning the place up. Restoring it to some of its former glory, as it were. Both the art history enthusiast and the fantasy fan in him are perking up at the prospect. There could be so many great things hidden underneath those layers of dust and grime.

“But,” Luca starts, voice serious, “do you think we’ll be able to stay here now that you have a job? Do you think the landlord will let us?”

Alin looks at his hands, picks at the frayed sleeve of his sweater. Truth is, he doesn’t know. He’s an optimistic person by nature, and has hopes of convincing the landlord, but they’re not high. The man is stubborn. But then, so are the Rotarus, he thinks. Of course, they wouldn’t be where they are right now if the Rotarus were a little less stubborn, but still. It’s a matter of pride.

“I hope so,” he tells Luca. The boy doesn’t look convinced. His hair is falling in his eyes, Alin notices. It needs a cut. His own does, too, it’s nearly down to his shoulders already. Surely, the scissors are around here somewhere.

“I hope so, too,” Luca says dubiously. He pushes his hair away and smiles sadly. Alin hates that he has to worry about this. He’s only fucking _thirteen_.

One floor down, their neighbors begin yelling at each other, as they usually do after holidays.

* * *

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“I—” Angélique looks around in confusion. “Nevermind. I thought I heard screaming, but it was probably a bird.”

“If you say so,” says Raj. “Hey, how’s your dad, by the way? I meant to ask. Wasn’t it his birthday around this time?”

Angélique shifts her attention to her friend. “My dad is fine, thanks! His birthday is the 28th. He’s not gonna celebrate it, he said.”

“Aw, pity.”

“He’s probably going to be working anyway.”

Raj nods. “Well, here we are! Let’s see if we can get you upright.” He grins broadly. “I really do think you’re more cut out for windsurfing, are you.”

Angélique sticks her tongue out at him. If she wants to surf, she’ll surf. She doesn’t hold with things like ‘impossible’. Can’t study mechanics? She’ll study mechanics. Can’t repair that? She’ll repair that. Can’t afford to leave the country? She’ll go seven other places all at once if she wants to. If her mother taught her anything, it’s that life is too short to spend it stuck in your thoughts.

They wade into the sea, which is just about the right amount of wild, according to Raj.

“It’s all down to the center of gravity, you know.”

For a moment, Angélique thinks it is Raj who said it, but then she recognizes the accent – Australian, rather than Indian – and blinks up into David’s smiling face.

By God, he is handsome, isn’t he? And not wearing a shirt, which is certainly not making it worse.

“I’ll go first!” Raj calls.

“Sure!” Angélique turns to David. “Center of gravity?”

He nods, looking over her head at Raj and his blindingly yellow surfboard.

“Get on there, yeah? I’ll see if I can help you.”

Mildly distracted, Angélique does as she’s told, clambering up on her own board and wobbling precariously. She doesn’t fall, though, which is a plus. Raj is applauding. She laughs in delight.

“Very good!” David says. “Okay, balance is—”

She feels her legs move their stance without giving them permission to.

“That was weird, I’m sorry.” David runs a hand through his wet hair.

Raj yells, “Lique, you’re doing great! Watch out for the next wave!”

David snickers, perhaps at the nickname, but then he’s behind Angélique all of a sudden, which should not fit, she’s pretty sure, but his hands are on her shoulders and he says,

“He’s right, watch out for the wave. Bend your knees – how did I get here, what the fuck –, okay, and— Yeah, like that.”

His fingers run down her arms as she reaches out, balancing herself. He’s not holding her up, not really, but certainly steadying her. Somewhere, she’s aware that Raj is still yelling instructions, but she tunes him out and listens to instincts that must be David’s because they sure aren’t hers, and spears ahead. Like this, it feels like _flying_. She almost feels like yelling that she’s the king of the world.

“I’m the king of the world,” David mumbles, laughter evident in his voice, and Angélique startles a laugh so abrupt that she loses her balance and falls over, taking the man down with her. The sea is too deep here for her to stand, but David catches her around the waist and holds her up. They both splutter seawater, still giggling.

Oh, but – this is a different sea. There is a town there, on the coast, instead of the forest Angélique is used to. The air is much, much drier than back home.

“Are we in Australia again?” she asks.

“Hm?” David looks around. “Yeah!”

They bob a little in the cool water. Absentmindedly, she watches her fingers curl against David’s chest, until she realizes what she’s doing and jerks her hand back. David has gone silent, and is watching her with an expression that is not quite curiosity and not quite amusement either.

“Uh,” she says. His arm tightens around her waist, long fingers slightly ticklish against her skin.

“Lique! That was great!”

“What, uhm—”

Raj. Of course. In the familiar waters of La Digue.

“Thanks?”

“Yeah! You’ve been holding out on me, have you.”

“I…” She flounders. Her waist feels cold. “Maybe I have.”

* * *

“So I shouldn’t be surprised if y’start talking Chinese to thin air, is what for you’re saying,” Torbjörn surmises.

With a smile, Tuomi replies, “Yeah, I guess that’s it.”

“’S weird, though, isn’t it? D’you think it’s magic or something?”

“Oh, no. No, it’s definitely something… Something to do with genetics, maybe. I don’t know if anybody understands.”

Torbjörn nods. His fingers trace patterns into the bare skin of Tuomi’s shoulder, where his sleeve of tattoos ends. It’s a familiar, reassuring gesture that has always served to put Tuomi’s mind at ease. He leans back against the headboard of their bed. It’s been a long day. Driving home, visiting parents, Lars asking three billion questions, as he tends to do. He’s a smart kid. They’ll have to watch that, make sure he keeps his mind occupied. Peter, now – Peter takes more after Christian than he does Tuomi or Torbjörn.

Tuomi skims the tips of his own fingers over his husband’s defined stomach, smiling when Torbjörn sucks in a breath. He’s ticklish. It never ceases to amuse Tuomi. Or their sons, for that matter.

He lets his fingers dip lower, underneath the warm blankets, touching them to the waistband of Torbjörn’s pajama pants. The man tips his head sideways so their lips can press together as Tuomi’s hand slips into his pants, palm pressing flat against him.

But Tuomi’s eyes open to reddish-brown where he expected light blue.

“Oh,” he breathes. That’s not Torbjörn.

The man’s eyes are half-lidded and have dark circles underneath them. He has a sharp jaw and thin lips – there’s a certain, lopsided charm to him, Tuomi thinks, much as he does _not_ look like Torbjörn. He curls his fingers, and the man gasps.

And Torbjörn tugs Tuomi to kneel over his hips, blankets sliding away. They kiss slowly. Unfamiliar, thin-fingered hands are on Tuomi’s hips, pushing at his pants. Then – no one but Torbjörn, and their pants are out of the way so Tuomi grinds his hips down and mouths at his neck.

The hands that clutch Tuomi’s back are much too small, and his nose pushes into a mass of curls that smell like the sea, but when he blindly reaches up, it’s Torbjörn’s firm lips underneath his. They rock together quietly, ever mindful of the two young boys sleeping nearby.

“Fucking hell,” a hoarse voice hisses, and there are teeth on Tuomi’s neck, which has his back arching. The hair between his fingers is wispy and coarse. His arousal seems to have tripled, and he bites his own lip to keep his voice down.

Torbjörn grasps both of them. But Tuomi is also holding himself, or not himself, somewhere else, and the curls tumble over his shoulder now, breasts press against his back. He kisses familiar – unfamiliar lips that are sticky with lip balm – are thin and dry or maybe not, and Torbjörn twists his wrist. Tuomi loses control.

“Oh, god,” he whispers against his husband’s shoulder after a long moment spent trying to catch his breath.

“Y’okay?”

“I can’t believe we just had a foursome and you didn’t even know it,” he mumbles breathlessly, then starts to giggle while Torbjörn sputters. “Oh, god, I’m sorry, that is so inappropriate. I can’t really control it.”

“Well, I— Y’did say, uhm…” Torbjörn pushes his glasses up. “It’s all a matter of time and place, right?”

Tuomi nods. Oh, wow. Did that just happen?

“Was it… Nice?” He sounds curious. Tuomi sits back and looks at him.

“Yeah,” he says. “I’ll let you know if it happens again.”

“Good.” And he _means_ it. How did Tuomi ever get so lucky?

* * *

Alin stares at the water-stained ceiling with what he’s sure is a massively stupid grin. Whatever this is, it has its advantages, doesn’t it? Then he frowns, because – didn’t he just technically help someone cheat? Hm, that’s not very good. If he sees the guy again, he’ll have to ask.

But it was nice. It was, very. Maybe this is not so bad, after all.

* * *

Riley does love it, David was right.

“The plot thickens,” they say, complete with wriggly hand motions. David laughs despite his worries. The plot does thicken, doesn’t it?

“So what’re you gonna do, then?” Riley shoves some cornflakes into their mouth. “Vind oud wha’s goin’ on?”

“Dunno.” It might help ease Eduard’s mind, that’s for sure. Even now, David can feel the man’s sense of worry nagging at his own thoughts. Besides, he has to admit he’s curious about the whole InGRes deal as well. Genetics research, in his hospital? Surely not.

“Oo wood,” Riley puts in, helpfully.

“What?”

They swallow. “You should. Little mystery never hurt anyone, has it?” They cock their head dubiously, hair flopping to the side. “Except when it has, I suppose, but you can handle that, I’m sure.”

“Thanks, mate. Very inspiring.”

“I aim to please.” They wink saucily, and David laughs and tries to hit them on the head with his spoon.

He will look, he decides. See what he can find out from the files Research undoubtedly keeps, because he believes in coincidence, but this is strange, he has to admit that. He might need to break in.

David feels a frisson of anticipation that he’s quite sure is not entirely his. He flexes his fingers.

“—And your code name shall be Koala.”

“Uhm, Riles, I think I just missed something important, there.”

With a dramatic sigh, Riley launches into the description of their cunning plan again.

* * *

“ _Miss Li Jing Fei. Li Jing Fei_.”

Leon shrinks in on himself, gritting his teeth against the sting of sadness-anger that flares in him when he hears that name. But – there’s nothing to be done about it, at least for now. He quickly stands up, before they can announce it again.

It’s stupid that a visit to the dentist, of all things, should be a burden. He’s not even afraid of the dentist, like his uncle is.

When he’s done, and feeling emotionally exhausted, he smashes into a woman in the waiting room, where he’s picking up his jacket. He literally smashes, in a hurry to get away – both of them nearly keel over at the impact.

“I’m so sorry,” he stammers. He’s never seen the woman before, and he briefly thinks, a member of his Cluster? But, no, she’s Chinese, and it doesn’t feel right in a way he could never put in words.

“Oh no, the fault is mine.” She tilts her head, obviously thinking. “Have we met?”

“I don’t think so, sorry.” There’s a possibility she’s seen him in the restaurant, of course. Or, he thinks optimistically, that she’s heard him play, somewhere.

The woman bites her lip. “No, I know you. Wait, uh – Leon Li? Yao Wang’s nephew?”

“Ye-es?” Many people seem to know his uncle around this part of town. It’s the restaurant. It’s gotten quite popular. Mei likes to joke it’s because of her charm.

“Yes? Oh, great! I’m Taylor Lin, I’m the drummer of a band called Thencewind. You… Probably haven’t heard of us, but anyway. You sing, right?”

“Yes?” Leon says again.

“Yes, I know you do, I’ve heard you. You also make great food, I’m sure you’d be an amazing boyfriend, but that aside – we haven’t got a permanent singer at the moment, but we would like to. And I’m wondering, would you like to relieve us of that problem?”

“Wh— Me?”

She nods, a wide grin plastered on her face. “We do English songs. Your English is good.”

My at least seven other languages are also good, he wants to say, but he doesn’t think it would be appreciated if he started to sing in Finnish.

“And you play the guitar, right?”

“Also keyboard and ukulele,” he says forlornly. His mind puts in that he also knows how to play the classical piano, violin and the electric bass, and can dance quite well, but he decides not to say that either.

“ _Miss Lin Chun Yan. Lin Chun Yan_ ,” the speaker crackles.

“That’s me,” Taylor says. “Think about it, okay? It’s totally alright if you don’t want to. Here’s my phone number, let me know.” She smiles again, presses a thick piece of paper into Leon’s hand, and marches over to the dentist, her boots clunking on the carpet.

Okay, _what_ just happened, Leon thinks. Did she really just—

He looks at the piece of paper. It’s a business card. ‘Thencewind’. What kind of music do they do, he wonders. Without a permanent singer, at that. Maybe Mei has heard of them. Mei tends to hear a lot. Sometimes, she also talks a lot, but that’s another matter.

At home, Leon finds his sister on her laptop, searching through available apartments in the neighborhood again. She’s been looking to move out for ages now, but it’s incredibly hard to find an affordable home in Hong Kong, not to mention the bias people seem to have against her being a woman living on her own. Leon himself is fine where he is, he reckons. He likes his uncle, and the rent he pays is very mild.

“Any success?” he asks by way of a greeting. Mei grunts noncommittally, her chin in her palm.

Leon sighs. He feels for her.

“Oh, hey, how was the dentist?”

“I’m sure the dentist was fine. My teeth are also quite alright.”

She sticks her tongue out at him.

“I’ve been offered a position as singer in a band,” he blurts.

“You _what_? At the dentist?” Mei exclaims, turning fully to Leon with her face lit up in a disbelieving grin. “That’s so cool! Right? What kind of band?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“What are they called, what are they called? I’ll look it up!”

Amused, he tells her the name, and she types it in. There are only a few grainy videos to be found, but from what Leon can hear, they’re not bad at all. English-language pop, it seems to be.

“I’d say yes if I were you,” an unfamiliar voice says behind Leon. He looks up at a blond man with brown eyes, who’s wearing pajamas. Must be Tuomi.

“Yeah?” he asks.

Tuomi smiles, a hint of sadness hidden underneath the twinkle in his eyes. Leon wonders if he knows that because he can read the man or because he can actually feel the melancholy.

“I had a band, you know, when I was in high school. I played the guitar.” He shrugs his left shoulder. His sleeve flaps against his side.

“Yeah,” Mei says, looking up at Leon from her chair, slightly confused. “Are you paying attention?”

“Yes – no, I’m not.” He locks eyes with Tuomi, then looks at his sister again. “Actually, Mei, there’s something else I have to tell you.”

* * *

Alin is clearing out furniture in the actually pretty decent rooms downstairs, with Stefan’s help, when the call comes.

“Uh, sorry.”

Stefan makes a ‘go on’ motion with one hand, so Alin picks up, feeling its stomach turn itself over when he sees the caller ID.

“Good morning, Mr Rotaru,” the landlord greets, monotone.

“Hello.”

“I will get straight to the point. There is no sense in letting it hang around; you will be evicted by the 30th, Mr Rotaru. Your _new job_ has not convinced, I’m sure you understand, that you will cough up the rent.”

Alin closes his eyes and leans against the musty red velvet couch. He catches a glimpse of Stefan looking at him in concern.

“Do you understand, Mr Rotaru?”

“Yes, I do. I do.”                  

“If you go without making a fuss, I will not ask you to pay what you owe me over December.”

“Of course,” he sighs. It’s not like he can do anything about it, not like he lives there a hundred percent legally to begin with.

“Very good. I will see you shortly to handle everything, then.” Alin can practically hear the sly smirk on the man’s face when he adds, “And a happy new year, Mr Rotaru.”

Alin’s fingers clench in the couch as he tries to fight down the angry tears threatening to spill. His optimistic nature is not easily shaken, not even after everything he and Luca have been through, but people like this never cease to infuriate him. He grits his teeth as he puts his phone away.

“Are you alright?” Stefan asks softly.

“No!” Alin bursts, then abruptly deflates, sinking down on the couch in a cloud of dust. “Sorry.”

“What—” Cautiously, Stefan sits down too. “What happened? If you wanna tell me?”

Alin looks up at the man. “That was my landlord. I have to be out of my apartment by year’s end.”

“Oh,” he breathes, eyebrows knitting together. “But that’s four days from now. Can he do that?”

“Don’t know. He’s never been too keen on rules.” Oh god, he doesn’t have a place to live! He can’t take care of Luca without a place to live! What if they take him away?

“Do you want some water or something?” Stefan asks, and Alin nods, aware that his breathing has sped up and that he’s shaking slightly. The man stands up carefully and walks out of the room. Someone else sits down, without the pouf of dust.

“I could offer you a place to stay,” says a female voice, “but I think I live a little out of the way.”

Alin looks up again. It’s Angélique, the girl from the beach. She looks completely out of place, yellow sundress a stark contrast with the dark room, like some old master’s painting. Alin wishes he could take a picture of it.

“I suppose you do,” he mumbles instead, wringing his fingers in his ratty jeans. She smiles, and for some reason, Alin feels marginally happier. When she touches his hands with warm fingers, he thinks – I had sex with her, didn’t I? Holy _fuck_.

“Hey, Alin,” Stefan starts, coming back with a bottle of water, “I was just thinking… You know, you could live here. If we hurry a bit, this floor can be livable in a few days, and it’s not like I have any other use for the house yet.”

Alin opens and closes his mouth a few times, completely dumbstruck.

“He’s cute,” Angélique says appraisingly.

He’s too fucking good for this world, Alin wants to say. He’s known me for less than a week, and… Fucking hell.

“I could withhold the rent on your pay. Think about it.”

“You’re not joking, are you?”

“Why would I be joking?”

Alin pushes his hair back. “I’ll have to – to talk about it with Luca, but I would… It’d be great.”

Stefan smiles. “Good. Let’s continue, then?”

“Let’s.” He saw some interesting cabinets earlier. He’s wondering what’s inside. The distraction would be welcome.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ALSO FEATURING  
> Ashleigh Clarke – Wy  
> Christian Oxenstierna – Denmark (so weird to give him the same surname as Sweden)  
> Egil Thomasson – Iceland  
> Joshua Clarke – Hutt River  
> Raj Misra – India  
> Sigurd Thomasson – Norway
> 
> idk what happened to Hutt River's characterization.
> 
> And also the DenIce thing was pretty much compulsory on account of _how much_ I ship them so I'm sorry haha. It won't be mentioned again. You can imagine it is a one-sided crush or something if you prefer, I don't mind.
> 
> New Zealand is a shit and I love them.


	4. it will work itself out in time

Research & Development is silent at night, unlike most other parts of the hospital. David finds it slightly eerie, used to the hustle and bustle of the first aid post downstairs.

He has picked the lock of an office using a pin with a skill that he’s certain is not his. Someone can pick locks very well, he thinks. It’s slightly worrying, but he doesn’t dwell. He has to work to do.

Documents, documents…

Oh, there’s one of those boxes over there. Heart pounding, he tries to see if there’s a way to get it open without breaking the seal, but doesn’t succeed, so he keeps looking for something else. After trying the drawers, he finds one locked. He squats and watches his fingers fumble the lock open in fascination.

The drawer slides open smoothly, and to David’s relief, there’s a folder inside labeled ‘InGRes – psycellium programme’. David goes through his mental catalogue of medical terms, but ‘psycellium’ means nothing to him. Of course, him working first aid, there are lots of specializations he knows next to nothing about, especially the things that happen up here.

“Put that away,” someone hisses. David startles and nearly falls over, but he catches himself and glares up at the woman now squatting next to him. She stares back, dark blue eyes completely unreadable. “Someone is coming.”

He doesn’t hear anything, but he believes her, so he quickly puts the folder back and slides the drawer shut as quietly as he can.

He’s managed to stand up and walk back to the other side of the desk when the door opens and a man he vaguely recalls having seen around the hospital enters the room, stopping dead in his tracks when he sees David.

“Who are you?” he asks sharply, eyeing David’s scrubs.

“David Clarke, I work at the first aid post. I’ve been… Sent to retrieve, uh.”

The man steps into what is probably his office. “Who let you in?”

“Uh.”

“No one let me in,” says a different woman, now in David’s place. “I’ve been informed I could wait here. I apologize if that was not the case.”

The man narrows his eyes, then says, “Very well. And you were sent here to retrieve…?”

She bites her lower lip, then replies, “A case file has been lost. My – superior hoped I could find it here.”

“What was your name again?”

The woman looks up at David. “David Clarke.”

She is gone when David’s pager begins to beep urgently, and it’s him standing in front of – he squints down at the man’s nametag – doctor Russell, again.

“Sorry, I gotta go,” he tells him, well aware how different his speech pattern is from who must be the last Cluster member he still missed, and hoping Russell doesn’t notice. Then again, even if he did, he probably wouldn’t draw the conclusion that David is not alone in his head. He hopes so, at least.

Russell squints after him when he rushes away.

* * *

Natalya’s phone is on a hotel nightstand, her gun thrown in a dumpster, her hair down, and she is seriously questioning her decision as she stares at Warsaw Central Station. She doesn’t know if she can do it. Not in a practical way, because she knows how easy it is to disappear. No, the question is whether she’ll be able to convince herself to go through with her spur-of-the-moment plan and just take the wrong train, get out of the country, out of reach of her employers.

Leave the only life she’s known for the past eight – nine? – years behind.

Well, if she’s honest with herself, which is a rare occurrence, it’s not that spur-of-the-moment. She’s wanted out for a long time. She never wanted _in_ , to begin with. But now, now that she’s had a taste of what her life could have been like, where she could have been if not for that goddamn fire all those years ago, she wants out more than ever.

They’ve been holding her family over her all this time. Her siblings. Still, she is afraid of what they might do to them.

Irinya and Ivan think she’s dead. Has been dead for nearly nine years.

She might as well have been. She has nothing left to lose except for them, and they don’t even know she’s alive.

“That’s not true,” Olympe says softly. “You have more to lose now.”

Natalya clenches her jaw. She wants to be angry that the woman is in her head like that, but she really can’t be, not when her mere presence makes her feel better.

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know. Away.”

“Go to Monaco.”

Natalya turns to Olympe, looking down at her questioningly. She’s wearing a pencil skirt again, light pink, and impossibly high heels, but still the top of her head reaches only just to Natalya’s nose.

“I have an apartment there. It’s empty now, only the housekeeper is around from time to time. You could stay there.” She winds the end of her braid around her fingers. “It must be more comfortable than whatever you were planning.”

Well, that is true. But can she accept such charity? Moreover – how is she going to get to Monaco without being traceable?

Oh, but that implies she’ll accept the offer. Natalya bites her lip. She knows, deep in her heart, that she will. That if fucking David from Australia would offer, she’d go too, because she _trusts_ these people, instinctively and without reservations. It should scare her, she thinks. Maybe it does.

“I’ll do it,” she tells Olympe, and then tells her stomach to settle when it insists on doing some sort of complicated leap of joy when the woman smiles softly. “Thank you.”

“I’ll get you a plane ticket,” says Eduard, and Natalya, startled into action, nearly hits him in the face.

* * *

Plane ticket for Natalya; check. Eduard still doesn’t know her full name, but he’s beginning to doubt Natalya’s her real name anyway, so he’s put that thought aside.

Now for InGRes.

The emails have stopped. They’ve probably gotten tired of it. It was weird to begin with. Weird, but intimidating, which was probably the intention.

David reported the word ‘psycellium’. That is, it floated into Eduard’s consciousness when he woke up, and somehow he knows that it’s connected to David and to InGRes. He’s decided not to ponder too much about that, because it’ll probably get uncomfortably philosophical fast. Eduard prefers straightforward data to vague speculation.

Which is why he’s very dismayed to find nothing about psycellium anywhere. It’s the Sensate thing all over again! Maybe they have something to do with each other.

God, he hates this.

“Wonton?”

“What?” Eduard asks, blinking in confusion.

“Do you want a wonton?” Leon asks, holding one out to him. “You look like you could use some food.”

As if on cue, Eduard’s stomach growls, reminding him that it’s past lunchtime and he’s only eaten a banana today. He wonders if eating anything Leon offers him will actually help, considering he’s not actually _there_ to eat it, but decides to take it anyway.

“It’s, like, shrimp and minced meat in dough,” Leon explains. They’re in a big kitchen, and Leon is leaning against the counter, eating a wonton himself. The sounds of the city are muffled, but still louder than Eduard is used to.

“We have that here – or, at home, in Estonia. It’s called pelmeenid. Usually no shrimp in it, though.” Eduard takes a bite. The taste of the wonton is dulled, but good all the same, so he smiles and nods at Leon, who quirks a smile back.

“Leon,” someone yells, “come on!”

“Sure!” he yells back. Then, to Eduard again, “Are you any good at video games?”

“Uh, depends?” Eduard follows Leon as he leaves the kitchen, mounting stairs that bring them to a narrow hall. “There’s some things I’m pretty good at.”

“Is Mario Kart one of them?”

“I… Guess.”

“Great,” Leon says. “Because my sister has to lose at least once in her lifetime, but it’s probably not gonna be to me.”

So Eduard opens the door, takes the controller Leon’s sister hands him with an evil smirk on her face, and forgets about the whole InGRes thing for a while.

* * *

“You did _what_?”

Angélique drops her wrench; it misses her foot by millimeters. Was that David’s voice?

“Oh, come on, Dave, nothing happened.”

Apparently, yes. She wipes her hands on a piece of cloth and walks to her house, from where the voices are coming. There should be no one inside – her father is out at sea today. She pushes the screen door open and walks into an unfamiliar kitchen, where David is pacing back and forth while someone with curly light brown hair and an exasperated expression leans against the counter, arms crossed. A white cat twines around the person’s feet.

“But what if it did? What if someone caught you? You had no plausible reason to be there.” He turns when he’s at the other end of the kitchen, and pauses mid-step when he catches sight of Angélique, who waves sheepishly. This is obviously a private conversation, but it’s not like she can control her mind. In this, at least.

“Well, you really didn’t eith—Okay, who’s here?”

“What?” David looks at his friend again. “Uh, Angélique. Angélique, this is Riley, my best friend.”

“Hi Angélique! The cat is Wellington, by the way,” Riley says brightly, looking roughly at Angélique’s left shoulder. She chuckles.

“Hello, Riley.” And then, to David, “Sorry for barging in.”

“She says hello,” David relays. “Yeah, so, Riles, you shouldn’t have done that. I’m serious.”

Riley rolls their eyes at Angélique’s shoulder, then says, “Well, it’s done, so stop complaining. Don’t you think that Eduard guy will be grateful?”

“Fine,” David sighs. “Fine, yes, it’ll calm him down to know what’s going on for sure. I just… Don’t like you taking risks like that.”

“Says the man who pokes snakes with sticks just to see what they’ll do.”

“That was—” He turns to Angélique. “That was once. Maybe twice. I’m a curious person.”

She is amused. She wonders how long Riley and David have known each other. They banter like siblings, and she feels like she, too, has known Riley for ages, which must be a reflection of what David is feeling.

“Oh my god,” Riley exclaims happily. “I hadn’t thought about it, but there’s seven new people I can tell embarrassing stories about you, Dave! This is amazing.”

Angélique laughs, then asks, “What’s this about Eduard? I know he was stressed, but what’s Riley done?”

David sighs again, then explains that Riley went to the hospital where he works and nicked some documents from an office that probably have something to do with the emails Eduard has been receiving, and an organization that does genetics research, apparently.

“So, yeah,” Riley says, still not quite looking at Angélique, “now he’s angry, because _he_ never does reckless things.”

“I’m not angry, Riles, I’m concerned.”

He is, actually. Angélique can feel it. Concern, and a tremendous amount of love for his roommate. It’s not weird. In fact, it feels like the most natural thing in the world, and she thinks, how did I always live without this? How does anyone live without this? It’s a miracle, this whole situation. A gift from God.

“Hey, but I promised to give you my phone number, right?”

Angélique looks up at David, who’s grinning.

“So you did, yeah! I’ll get a pen.”

* * *

Olympe watches Natalya poke around, feeling, stupidly, like an intruder in her own home. She’s never here during the winter. Everything looks so bland in the weaker sunlight, without the flowers on the balcony blooming.

She notices, for the first time, how light Natalya’s walk is. It is almost as if she doesn’t even touch the ground as she pads through the hall. There is a certain grace to her. Olympe wonders if that’s just part of being an assassin, being as quiet as possible, or if there’s more to it. If maybe, in a different life, Natalya was or would have been a dancer. She holds herself like one.

“Are you sure it is alright for me to be here?” the woman asks, snapping Olympe from her thoughts.

“Of course it is. I want you to be safe.” She cares about Natalya. “The housekeeper will not be coming anymore, so you don’t have to worry about that.”

Sitting down cross-legged on the fluffy rug, Natalya asks, “Did you grow up here?”

“Not in this apartment, but I am from Monaco, yes.” She thinks about the house where she grew up, closer to the sea, with her endless parade of nannies and private teachers, her mother out in courtrooms and her father busy leading a political party. The whispered angry conversations when they thought she was asleep. She smiles when she remembers her old ballet school, the few times her parents could both attend a performance.

The thought shifts. A different ballet teacher, other pupils. They are older than she ever was when she danced. Olympe spins and faces her reflection in the mirrored wall. It isn’t her, but Natalya, younger than she is now – seventeen, perhaps – in a dark blue leotard.

“Oh,” she breathes, and the memory vanishes, leaving her and Natalya staring at each other. “You did ballet too.”

Natalya looks down at her hands, folded in her lap. “I did. I could have been a professional ballerina.”

Olympe doesn’t ask what happened, but she knows, like a distant memory, that there was a fire, which ended the ballet career and started Natalya on the path she is on now. _Was_ on, if she has any say in it.

“I think I will be returning home in the new year,” she says instead. Natalya looks up at her again. “If that is alright by you.”

“It’s your house,” she mumbles.

“I should like to have some company. It gets lonely.”

Natalya doesn’t say anything, but doesn’t look away either, and the small smile that appears on her face is completely genuine.

* * *

Tuomi dreams that he is playing the guitar. Which, on itself, is not that strange or uncommon, but when he wakes up, he doesn’t think it was a dream at all. He smiles. So Leon accepted that woman’s offer after all. Good for him.

He goes to wake Peter and Lars, turning all the lamps in the house on as he goes. The days are lengthening again, but this far north, they still get a mere three hours of sunlight per day. You get used to it.

Torbjörn hobbles into the kitchen a few minutes after Tuomi and kisses him lightly on the cheek.

“Dad!” Peter exclaims, also storming into the kitchen. “You wanna hear what I dreamed? It was so cool, there was a dinosaur and he ate Lars!”

Lars frowns at his brother, and Tuomi has to laugh. He’s four and he already has the Oxenstierna stare down. He’s gonna go far.

“And he also ate Uncle Christian!”

“That seems a bit excessive,” says Egil dryly. Tuomi looks at him with a smile still lingering around his lips. He smiles back, shifting from foot to foot.

“I’m sorry for interrupting,” he starts, “but I just wanted to say that – uhm – Sigurd and Christian are probably gonna worry any minute now, but please tell them I’m okay if they call.”

Tuomi raises his eyebrows and mouths ‘What?’, because, well, Torbjörn might know about the Sensate thing, but Peter and Lars would probably start asking questions if their father started talking to thin air.

“Just tell them I’m fine.” Egil looks a little pleading, so Tuomi nods, although he’s still confused. “Thank you.”

And with that, he’s gone.

* * *

In record speed, Alin, Luca and Stefan have cleared and cleaned enough rooms of the mansion that, yes, it will make a very nice place to live. Maybe it still smells a little musty, and maybe the paint has seen better days and their sparse belongings don’t quite fill the high rooms, but it’s miles better than living under a bridge. Luca is ecstatic about the house, imagination running wild, and he likes Stefan in the mostly uninterested way that most thirteen-year-olds like or dislike people older than them.

Alin has stopped looking for the catch, at least for now. His worst fear is that Stefan is after Luca in any way, but… Nothing seems to indicate that is the case. And if it’s Alin the guy wants – in any way – well, he has the force of seven people behind him, one of whom is an assassin, so he’s quite sure he’s safe. But he thinks he can trust Stefan, and he likes to think his people skills are good enough to judge that.

It’s the 30th now. Nearly a new year. There’s a good chance it’s going to be a very interesting one.

* * *

David’s hands are shaking. He tries to will them still before knocking on dr. Russell’s door, but it doesn’t work very well. Taking a deep breath, he knocks anyway, and enters when he hears an invitation.

“David Clarke, good afternoon,” dr. Russell greets, politely but detachedly. “Please take a seat. Can I call you David?”

“Of course. Good afternoon, sir.” David sits down on the cold chair. His hair falls into his eyes, but he ignores it.

“Very well. I’ll get to the point, I’m sure you are needed downstairs. David, it’s come to my attention that some fairly important documents have gone missing from my office.”

“That is… Unfortunate,” David replies.

“It certainly is! Now, you must understand, these documents were in a locked drawer, and somehow… They still vanished. You know where this is going. You were recently in my office, without reason. You are the only one who has been. If you would like to tell me what you were doing if not looking for those particular documents, I would be most grateful.”

David shakes his hair out of his eyes. Where is that woman when you need her?

“And if you do have the documents, and return them right now, I will make sure you will face minimum consequences.”

Tempting, that is certain, but David thinks of how frantically Eduard has been trying to decipher what the hell ‘psycellium’ is and how it is connected to whatever InGRes was doing that compelled his group to hack them earlier in the year, and his overall uneasy feeling about the case, and he decides against it, even though he knows that means he is risking his career.

“I was looking for a case file.”

“You were not, David,” Russell says snidely. “I asked. No one sent you here. You are only making this worse for yourself. Those documents are invaluable to the research we are conducting here.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The doctor stands up and leans over his desk. “You absolutely do. I don’t know what you think you will gain from this, but—”

An alarm begins blaring out in the hall, and David nearly falls out of the chair.

“What is that!” Russell exclaims. “You wait here.” He storms away, leaving David alone.

“You have to go now,” Eduard hisses. “I can’t keep that thing going forever.”

“ _Go_?”

“I think it’s much bigger than it seems. InGRes, I mean. You have to get out of their reach before it pulls you under.”

“But I— Like he doesn’t know where I live!”

Eduard shakes his head, eyes wide behind his glasses. “So get away. I can help you, but not if you stay here. Believe me, this is a can of worms you don’t want opened.”

Like there’s any can of worms he does want opened, David thinks. The alarm quiets, and he takes a deep breath, looks at Eduard, and stands up.

No time like the present to start breaking rules.

* * *

Fireworks are sort of like a drug to Leon. It’s weird. He doesn’t like fire, but the colors and the explosions resonate with him in almost the same way good music does. Mei is going to laugh at him, as she does every year, and his friends will look bemused, but he loves New Year’s just for the fireworks. He doesn’t care much about it otherwise – he’s Chinese, the lunar new year is when his year starts.

It feels different this time. He thinks it might the influence of the seven people around the world who do view this day as the last of their year.

It must already have turned midnight in Australia, but Leon hasn’t felt anything in particular coming from David. The absence of it has him feeling rather out of sorts. Angélique should be next, probably.

“Oh my god, there’s so many people here!”

Leon looks sideways at – Angélique, staring open-mouthed at the busy street to the harbor where the fireworks will take place. He’s waiting for some friends of his to show up.

“How do you stand this?” she asks in disbelief. Leon laughs through his facemask.

“I think it’s a matter of getting used to it.”

“It’s insane,” she says, but she’s smiling in wonder. They’re about the same height, Leon notes. “And why the mask?”

He shrugs. “Bad air.”

“Ah. We don’t really get that where I live.”

No, he supposes they don’t, in the middle of the ocean. He hadn’t known the Seychelles existed, until the Cluster was birthed, but he thinks it sounds like a great place to vacation.

“Hey, Leon?”

“Hm?”

“Have you… Have you heard anything from David?”

“No, sorry.”

She sighs, pursing her lips. It is strange, Leon has to admit. Despite not knowing David all that well in terms of actually having interacted with him, he’s certain the man is the type to have some great get-together for New Year’s Eve, possibly get more than a little drunk and go out with a bang, as it were. He should have felt _something_.

He sees his friends coming up the street, waving enthusiastically. He waves back.

“I’m sure David is fine,” he tells Angélique, who nods with her eyebrows knitted together.

“He must be.”

* * *

The main problem about trying to leave on New Year’s Eve, David has found, is his family, who, after he was unable to attend the Christmas barbeque, insisted he come celebrate it with them. At the time, he happily accepted, of course, but getting out of it was hard. And he didn’t like it, because he loves his family and was looking forward to spending time with them.

“Well, at least you have me,” Riley says from the passenger seat, and for a moment David wonders if his friend is psychically gifted in a similar way to him. However, he quickly concludes that it’s just a Riley thing, purely because they’ve known each other for an eternity. Twenty-one years this year, if he’s counting right.

“You didn’t have to come.”

“I know. You told me about twenty-thousand times.” Riley is looking at him when David glances aside, but averts their eyes. “I’m not going to let you have an adventure without me. Someone has to come up with the cunning plans, after all.”

David chuckles despite himself. An adventure. That’s one way to put it, he guesses, dropping everything and practically fleeing in the middle of the night, with only the faintest idea of why exactly you’re doing so. They haven’t even taken their phones. Not like David needs one to communicate to the people that are important now, aside from his family, but it still feels weird. Riley has taken their notebook, though, and they slipped a note to the neighbors to look after Wellington.

“Do you think we ought to ditch the car?” Riley wonders.

“Come on, this isn’t a book, Riles.” Or maybe they should. David has no idea. He’ll have to ask Eduard next time he sees the man. David has not heard anything but loud explosions from the Cluster for a while now. Leon, he supposes. Nowhere else has the new year already begun, has it?

* * *

What did Egil expect Sigurd and Christian to say when Tuomi told them that he was fine, anyway? ‘Okay, great, we will now stop worrying’? He must understand they were going to ask how Tuomi knew, and that he and Torbjörn would have to make up some story about speaking to Egil on the phone because he borrowed Tuomi’s _calculator_ , of all things, and forgot to return it.

What’s worrying Tuomi, though, is that, at the moment, he can’t seem to reach Egil. He knows it’s not as simple as all that, nothing like picking up a phone, but somehow it just doesn’t feel right. Either Egil has learned to deliberately shut people out, or he himself is out for the count.

When Tuomi walks to Peter’s room to wake him for the turn of the year, as promised, he ends up standing in a room where festivities have obviously taken place, that is now only sparsely populated with oddly dressed people, some swaying slightly on their feet. There is a whole forest of champagne glasses on a table, and Eduard is still drinking from one. He lifts it at Tuomi, his wide, old-fashioned sleeve almost catching three others.

“Happy new year.”

“Almost,” Tuomi replies. He comes closer, and sees that behind his glasses, Eduard’s eyes are framed by dark circles, and that the man is leaning on a chair quite heavily.

“Ah, of course.  You’re in the same time zone as Natalya, though you’re closer to me.”

“As— Where is Natalya? I thought she was in Kiev.”

“Monaco,” he says. “Champagne?”

Tuomi shakes his head, and Eduard shrugs. He really is oddly clothed, like there was a sort of casual LARP party going on. Maybe there was. That’d be cool, Tuomi thinks; he’s always thought LARPing was fascinating, though the closest he ever gets to it is going all out when there’s a metal festival somewhere. He’s very good at eyeliner. Nevertheless, the clothes don’t hide how tired Eduard looks.

“You look like shit,” Tuomi tells the man.

“Tactful. Very Finnish of you.”

“Sorry.”

“No, I know I do. You try keeping Australian hours.” In response to Tuomi’s inquisitive look, he explains, “I had to help David. He’s… He could be in trouble. Hey, do you know anyone in the medical field?”

“I don’t. Why?”

Somehow, Tuomi knows the answer to his question before he’s said a word.

“Psycellium,” they chorus, and then both of them look equally surprised. Eduard starts to laugh nervously, putting his empty glass away.

“This is so weird.”

“Maybe I could ask my father,” Tuomi offers. “He’s a biology teacher, so he might know something.”

“Do ask, please. It’s going to drive me insane keeping up with all seven of you.”

Clasping Eduard’s shoulder briefly, Tuomi says, “Get some rest. You’re not alone in this.”

Eduard smiles and thanks him, and Tuomi continues on his way to Peter’s bedroom hastily, but he needn’t have bothered, because the boy in question launches himself at him from across the landing, and both of them go down in a laughing tangle of limbs. Tuomi only realizes later he could have asked Eduard if he could help him get a lock on Egil.

* * *

It’s odd to be able to experience the new year sweeping across the world in this way, but it also makes Olympe happy. She’s usually alone on New Year’s Eve, and technically, she is this year as well, but she doesn’t feel lonely. Earlier, she wished Natalya a happy new year. The woman is looking better already, smiling marginally more, and her knife was on the table when Olympe left. Olympe knows she’ll need professional help if she really wants to get back to a ‘normal’ life, as normal as life will get with the Sensate thing, that is, but she’s doing well so far.

And with the eight of them, she thinks they can pull through a lot. They have _already_ pulled through a lot. She can’t say what, but she knows this. After all, they have eight times 27, is 216 years of life experience between them.

* * *

There is a dip in tourism after the Western new year, which gives Leon some extra time to get to know his _bandmates_. He has bandmates! He still can’t believe it. And they’re nice too, so it’s been great.

Nevertheless, the restaurant is still rather busy, regulars and new patrons alike coming in for lunch and dinner, so most of his time is still spent there. Leon has found himself craving to make slightly different things than usual lately. Some days, he wants more fish, other days it’ll be stew or even something barbequed. It’s pretty cool, he thinks, that he could probably prepare any of those things perfectly given the right ingredients – he’s not sure what ‘coco de mer’ is, but it doesn’t sound like something you can get in Hong Kong. And there’s not a lot you can’t get in Hong Kong.

Lost in his thoughts as he is, Leon swears and burns half his hand when there is an enormous crash from the other end of the kitchen, where his uncle is – lying on the floor? Leon rushes over and kneels down, avoiding the mess of fallen bowls. Yao is frowning, eyebrows twitching as if he’s in pain, eyes tightly shut.

“Uncle?”

Yao opens his eyes cautiously. “Oh, Leon,” he groans, “get some painkillers, will you? Mar—” He screws his eyes shut again and clutches his head.

When Leon returns with the painkillers, Yao has propped himself up against the stove.

“Thank you.”

Leon nods. “What happened?” he asks, as he starts to clean up the bowls his uncle dropped.

A grimace. “Something happened to Marco.”

“Is Marco a member of your—”

“My Cluster, yes. Get me some water!”

Ah, he’s already being bossy again, that’s a good sign. Still, Leon fetches some water without protesting. He’s curious about his uncle’s Cluster. Of course he is. It’s an essential part of what makes Yao Yao, and the man has not been very open with information about it. Not that Leon has been so forthcoming himself, to tell the truth.

“So what happened to _Marco_ , then?”

“Well… We lost contact with him. He was out. Now he’s back, but he’s in pain.” Yao sighs, pushing some hair that has slipped free from his eternal ponytail away from his eyes. “They did something to him. He’s… Blurry.”

“ _They_?”

“An organization, I don’t know what they do, but it’s not good… They’re called InGRes. See, Leon, it’s important to be careful. Not everyone likes people like us much, it seems.”

Oh _hell_ , is all Leon can think, because he can feel previously unseen puzzle pieces click together in his subconscious. David is in greater trouble than he realizes.

He wisely decides not to tell Yao about this.

* * *

David doesn’t think he likes being on the run very much. Apart from him missing work and probably worrying his family half to death, it’s also insanely hot, so it’s a fucking pain to be confined to his car, and as much as he loves Riley, he has to admit they’re not always the best at being helpful. And he hasn’t heard from his Cluster since New Year’s Eve, two days ago.

“I am _so_ sorry,” Eduard says from the backseat. “I didn’t mean to just leave you to it, believe me. I got caught up with some other things.”

David can’t even begin to fathom why the man is awake, because it has to be midnight in Europe at the moment.

The car is parked in the shade and Riley has gone out to buy some food, so he turns around to face Eduard.

“Don’t worry, I’m getting by fine.”

He nods and pushes his glasses up. “Good to hear. It was probably a good idea to go. Leon told me his uncle says that InGRes are after Sensates specifically, so if they somehow found out that you…”

“Wait, what do you mean? Why are they after—”

“Leon’s uncle doesn’t know. They hurt someone of his Cluster in Italy. He barely got out.”

Italy. Wow. This truly _is_ international, isn’t it? That makes sense, if they’re really targeting people like them, for whatever reason, but that doesn’t make it less frightening.

Eduard yawns, and David becomes abruptly aware of the fatigue rolling off him. The doctor in him rears its head.

“Have you been getting enough sleep? You know, just because you’re the only one who’s that good with a computer doesn’t mean you have to be the one taking care of everything, mate.”

“I know,” says Eduard. He sighs. “I know. It’s hard for me to let other people do things.”

That’s something David recognizes. However, the thing about being a doctor is that it’s important to be able to work with other people, and he’s had to learn that it’s okay to not be able to do everything.

“But, listen,” Eduard is saying, “I think you should just keep going like this. They don’t know you’re a Sensate, so they’re probably not going after you with all they have. Maybe you can go camping somewhere.”

“Riley’d like that,” David replies, smiling. It’d be a bit like when they were kids and camped out in David’s backyard, pretending they were adventurers sleeping under the stars.

“I’m glad they would. If you need me, you know where I am.”

“Yeah, thanks again.” He reaches out to put a hand on Eduard’s shoulder. “Don’t overexert yourself. You’re not gonna be useful to anyone if you conk out, yeah?”

The man nods.

“Ace.”

The passenger door opens, and David looks back at Riley, who waves. Their hair is now held back by a floral-patterned headband, which David raises his eyebrows at.

“It’s hot,” Riley just says, and, flicking their gaze between David and the backseat, “I have food. Do you have any more information?”

David tries to relay Eduard’s message best he can and watches Riley’s face go worried as he talks.

“So… You’re _actually_ on the run, Dave. Someone might be after you for a reason you can’t do anything about. You’re not just an outlaw, you’re a renegade.” Somehow, despite the absurdity of that sentence, Riley manages to make it sound serious. David’s halfhearted chuckle dies on his tongue. If it’s true… Then he _is_. If only they knew what InGRes wants! He could weaponize himself, in a manner of speaking. Or maybe not. Maybe literally.

Riley touches his arm. “You know I’m not gonna leave you.”

He knows, so he reaches out to hug them. They’ll stick together.

Both literally and figuratively, because hugging someone in this weather is a terrible idea.

* * *

Maybe she is imagining it, but Natalya could swear she can feel Olympe coming closer to where she is, like a string that’s being let go. She knows the woman is in Monaco already, but hasn’t visited her since the plane landed. Somewhere, she’s afraid she won’t turn up at the apartment. That Alin was right, and all of this is a hallucination. She sighs, looking at her knife on the table. Her sleeve feels empty when it’s not hidden in there.

The front door, opening into the building’s gallery, swings open with barely a sound. Immediately, Natalya is hit with an overwhelming feeling of being _home_ and abandons her plan to wait in a corner of the living room in favor of rushing to the hall.

The difference between visiting someone through the link and actually seeing Olympe stand there is unbelievably enormous that it knocks the breath out of Natalya, and Olympe too. The feeling ricochets between them, until Olympe laughs shakily, hand covering her mouth.

“Oh, this is amazing,” she says. Natalya is aware that she’s speaking French, but is also able to understand her every word despite her French not being that good.

“You’re here,” she replies, and Olympe nods.

She puts her suitcase against the wall so it won’t fall over, then click-clacks her way across the hall until she hovers in front of Natalya. She seems… More vibrant, somehow, her hair blonder and her eyes bluer than they are through the link. Her makeup is immaculate despite the long trip she’s had, and she smells like lavender.

“I…” she starts, reaching out a hand to Natalya cautiously, but Natalya recoils on instinct. She doesn’t like to be touched. Olympe curls her fingers in thin air, and Natalya regrets it immediately. This woman is part of her. She shouldn’t be acting like this. And yet.

“It’s okay,” Olympe says softly. “It’s good to see you in real life.”

“Yes,” Natalya replies. Her voice is hoarse. “There’s tea, if you want some.”

She smiles, eyes twinkling behind her glasses. “That would be lovely.”

* * *

The house is looking much better already, Alin reckons. He, with a little help from Luca and occasionally Stefan, who keeps stopping by to check on the proceedings, has gotten the old furniture out and cleaned the worst of the dust. Stefan’s aunt – because he _did_ inherit the house from an aunt – had apparently lived solely in the kitchen and the living room, leaving the other rooms in complete disuse. They have found nothing of actual worth, but there are old photos scattered around the whole place, which Alin passed on to Stefan to distribute to his family or whatever he wanted, and more interesting stuff, ranging from teaspoons to phonebooks to a _vibrator_ , that Alin had thrown across the room in horror, knocking a lamp off a shelf.

Still, there is a sense of impending doom, if you will, because this isn’t forever. Sooner or later, Stefan will decide what he wants to do with the house, probably sell it, and then Alin and Luca will have to go. Nice as the man is, Alin has no illusions that any of his plans include having them hanging around. He has a good job; he doesn’t need a deadbeat like Alin in his life.

But that’s not what Alin is, is he? He’s always done his best to work hard, to support Luca even if that cost him everything. He’s far from a deadbeat. Even so, Stefan will have no need of him when the house is finished in whatever way it needs to be. That’s just common sense.

He’s out in the giant yard, because it’s a beautiful winter day and it is stuffy inside, and not for the first time, he wishes for a cigarette, if only to occupy his restless fingers. He wouldn’t, though. His smoking habit was the first thing to go when he started taking care of Luca. Instead, he just twirls a pencil between his fingers, hides it up his sleeve as he pretends to take it in the other hand. Luca has always been fond of his magic tricks, but he’s been growing out of it lately. Alin supposes he should be happy the kid ever saw the magic in the world to begin with, that he’s still so optimistic, but it saddens him to think he might one day soon not be the cool big brother anymore, and instead an embarrassing parental figure.

He sighs, watching his breath cloud with vague dissatisfaction.

“Are you moping?” someone asks.

Alin looks to his right, where he finds the invisible Asian man from the café, again in short sleeves, leaning back on the wooden bench with his legs crossed at the ankles.

“No,” Alin protests. “Who are you?”

“I’m Leon,” he says. “You were, though. What’s eating at you?”

Alin wants to say that it’s none of his business, but it _is_ , isn’t it? There’s this… Connection, he doesn’t know how to explain. As weird as it is, it doesn’t scare him, not anymore.

So he tells Leon, “I’m just worried about the future, but that’s not news.”

Leon nods. “It will work itself out in time.”

Of course it will, there’s just no telling what the outcome will be. Alin smiles a little nonetheless. All options are open, at least, and that hasn’t been the case for a long time.

When he looks again, Leon is gone, but further away, the gate is swinging open. Is Luca back from his friend’s house already? He’s not usually so early.

The mop of hair that appears is darker than Luca’s, and considerably shorter. Oh, Stefan. Had he said he would be coming by? Alin waits to see if the man will spot him, taking the opportunity to just watch him walk across the courtyard, dark green coat zipped up all the way, hands in his pockets. His legs are long and slim and clad in black.

Alin has no problem admitting that he thinks Stefan is attractive. So maybe he’s not a god on earth, but he’s handsome, certainly, and his eyes are the most vibrant shade of green Alin has ever seen. What he does have a problem of sorts with, however, is the fact that Stefan is also beyond nice, has a good sense of humor, and gets along well with Luca. He’s got endearing mannerisms, likes to talk about books, and – that’s what worrying Alin. It would be so _easy_ to fall in love with him, to lose himself in fantasies about what it could be like to have someone like Stefan in his life indefinitely.

He can’t allow himself that, not when there’s so much on the line besides his own pride.

“Oh, Alin!” Stefan calls.

He’s been succeeding so far, by sheer force of will.

“Hi!” he yells back.

And the Rotarus are stubborn.

“Beautiful weather, right?”

Alin nods, smiling up at Stefan, and squashes the butterflies in his stomach.

* * *

Should she tell her father what’s happening to her? Angélique is afraid he might notice her acting strange, and jump to conclusions that are far worse than the truth. He hasn’t said anything so far, but she knows he isn’t stupid, and he only wants her to be alright.

She feels guilty from time to time, because she feels sometimes like the island is too small for her, like she’d rather be elsewhere. Not Hong Kong, maybe, with its endless mass of people, but some other places she has seen were amazing. But that seems disrespectful towards her father. She can’t just leave him here, all on his own. He was so happy when she came back home after her mother’s death, having finished her studies at Mahé’s technical school, so grateful that he didn’t have to be alone in the small house.

He’s talking to a friend of his down the street, and Angélique watches him gesture and smile and wishes she could find the courage to tell him, but it’s too personal, in a way.

A slight change in the air alerts her to a presence next to her, and she looks up to find David blinking at his surroundings, then smiling and sitting down next to her on the porch, legs dangling over the edge.

They don’t say anything for a while, but the silence is comfortable, like they’ve known each other for years, and not barely two weeks. Angélique swings her legs while she cleans her tools with a piece of cloth.

“Is that your dad?” David eventually asks. He’s leaning back on his hands.

She looks up. “Yes.”

He smiles wistfully into the distance. Angélique feels a sense of longing, and subconsciously shuffles closer to him, pressing their thighs together.

“Are you alright?” she asks softly.

“Oh, yeah.” He huffs. “Mostly. I hate to think that I’m worrying my family.”

No one’s told Angélique what exactly is going on, but she finds she doesn’t need an explanation; she just _knows_ , and she worries for David.

“My brother is probably making up ridiculous stories as we speak,” the man muses. “Sometimes I think he’s spent too much time with Riley.”

Angélique smiles. “Tell me about them.”

He looks down at her, confused.

“Your family.” She puts her cloth down. “I’d like to hear about them. Or Riley, if you want.”

“Riley’s practically family anyway.” He grins. “Okay, well, I don’t know what you wanna hear, but, I guess, I have two younger siblings. Significantly younger. My brother’s nineteen and my sister’s twelve. Ashleigh’s more like me, always outside… Eating worms and stuff. No, she doesn’t do that anymore. I was the worst enabler when she was younger!”

Angélique laughs, because there are unclear memories floating between them of a little brown-haired girl in pink overalls throwing insects and worms at her older brother, who’s shrieking and hiding behind his father. She has no doubts that if she had siblings, she would have done things like that too. God knows she and Raj got into enough trouble as kids.

“Josh has had ambitions ranging from opening a bakery to becoming prime minister, and the great thing is my parents always support him, even when he wants something ridiculous.” He runs a hand through his hair, then strokes the stubble on his chin. “And the first time I met Riley, we were both six. That same day, I rode my bike right into the sea because they convinced me it would float.”

“That sounds like a good start of a friendship,” Angélique says.

“It was. I don’t think my parents were too happy about it, though.”

She wonders, out of nowhere, if David has ever been in love with Riley, or the other way around, and the thought sends a sharp jab of – jealousy? – through her chest.

“What about your family?” David asks, softly.

She snaps out of it and looks over at her father again. “I don’t have any siblings… Just my parents.”

They’d been perfectly happy, the three of them, her mother working at a hotel and her father as a fisher, until her mother had fallen ill.

“What’d she have?” David asks. She doesn’t remember speaking those words aloud, but maybe she doesn’t need to.

“It was cancer,” Angélique replies. “We couldn’t afford the treatment she needed.”

David sighs. He puts a hand on her leg, holding her thigh just below the edge of her dress. It’s reassuring in more ways than it should be.

“When we first met, you were at her grave, weren’t you?”

“Yes.” Angélique looks down at her hands.

“Sorry about that, by the way, I didn’t mean to intrude.”

It’s not like they have much control over the connection.

“I guess not,” he says. “Do you miss her a lot?”

“Yes. Every day.” It had been so quick – not even a year after the diagnosis, she’d been gone. Angélique has spent many prayers since then asking God how He could allow something like that, how He could be so cruel. “I believe she is in a better place now, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have rather had her here.”

“Of course,” David says. He wraps a heavy arm around her shoulders, and she presses into his side, hooking her leg behind his.

“You’re going to be alright, right? Whatever this InGRes is, we’ll take care of it together.”

He huffs a laugh that ruffles Angélique’s hair. “I can only hope so.”

If only her father could see her, sitting on the porch with a strange man’s arms around her!

“Wouldn’t he like me?” David asks, laughter in his voice.

Again, she didn’t realize she somehow communicated her words to him.

“I’m sure he would like you. You’re likeable. He’d just be very surprised.”

He turns his head and presses a kiss into her hair, like it’s the most natural thing ever. It feels like it is.

* * *

The way that Natalya faces this new life is admirable, Olympe thinks. If it were anyone else, she’d suspect they were acting, and acting well, but she can _feel_ how relieved Natalya is to be rid of her former job, though there’s always an underlying layer of fear that Olympe finds it hard to get a grasp of. It’s like Natalya is hiding her thoughts from herself as much as from Olympe. From all of them, she corrects herself. It’s not just her with this connection.

Nevertheless, though there are things that are stark reminders of who Natalya was shaped to be, there are more things that signify progress, a sense of moving on from that. Olympe isn’t sure how she knows this so certainly, but there is knowledge somewhere in the Cluster about traumatic experiences that filters through to her subconscious, and she is grateful for that.

Today, Natalya offered to go out and buy groceries, which would be her first foray out into Monaco of her own accord.

Half an hour after she’s gone out, there is a prodding at the front door of Olympe’s apartment. She looks up from her laptop. Natalya can’t be back already. For one, it’s too early, and Olympe should have felt it, she’s certain. Everything becomes clearer when Natalya is closer. Maybe one of her neighbors? But they would knock, wouldn’t they?

The door slams open, and Olympe barely has time to jump up in surprise before four men burst into her living room, dressed normally but pointing guns straight at her. Her heart pounds in her throat.

“Where is she?” one of them barks, in Russian, but she understands him nonetheless.

“Who?” she manages to ask, voice only steady because she’s practiced so much. Her acting skills, she’s afraid, won’t be of much use this time around. _How do they know her address_? Natalya, she frantically thinks, please help. The link is silent.

“You know who we mean!”

“She’s not here.”

He steps around the table. She raises her hands on instinct as she recoils, wanting to protect herself, and he snarls, grabbing her wrist and swinging his arm out so that she stumbles and falls into a wall.

“She _will_ be here. We know she will be.”

 _Don’t come back_ , Olympe tries to think at Natalya. Her arm is trembling in the man’s grip, with anger as much as with fear.

“She won’t.”

He huffs and raises his gun.

“Leave her the fuck alone!” a man’s voice shouts. No one hears but Olympe, who looks up at a man of about-average height, with messy sandy-colored hair and an absolutely _furious_ look on his round face. He charges by her, and then he _is_ her, or she is him, and she watches their arm raise and knock the guy’s gun away. She can step back, and watch him drive his fist against the stunned man’s jaw, then spin around and pick up the gun, looking mildly surprised at his own hand for a second.

A moment of silence. The intruders aim but don’t shoot, and the man – Tuomi, her mind provides helpfully – stands perfectly still, brown eyes calculating. It doesn’t fit at all with the laugh lines around his eyes, or the pencil scratches on his jeans.

Then everything happens at once. Tuomi lunges forward, catching the first man off-guard and knocking his weapon away, too. The other two jump at him, and he scrambles away. There is a scratch on his forehead that Olympe feels on her own. The front door bursts open again, slamming into the wall in the hall, and then Natalya is running into the room, catching all of them by surprise as she knocks one intruder out swiftly. The remaining man turns around and charges at her. She’s terrified, Olympe can feel it, but there’s no trace of it on her face.

Tuomi launches himself at the man from behind, knocking him over with sheer momentum. He falls forward, but catches himself on his hands and spins around to pin Tuomi down on the ground. Olympe clasps her hands over her mouth in shock.

“Little feisty, huh?” he snarls. Tuomi grimaces.

Natalya kicks the man in the side, but he grabs her leg so she falls to the ground. Olympe muffles a sound into her hands. She continues to kick him, and Tuomi is wriggling his arm free. None of the other men seem to be going to wake up anytime soon, at least.

Tuomi’s arm is free, and he yanks at the man’s hair, which distracts him enough to let go of Natalya, who immediately leaps up and brings her fist down against his head in such a way that he falls flat on top of Tuomi, who splutters indignantly until she rolls the man away from him and he can stand up. They look at each other silently, panting, like they’re inspecting the other’s fighting style. Olympe is aching all over. Her arms feel like they’re bruised, and her head hurts.

At last, Tuomi nods.

“Thank you,” he says.

“No problem,” Natalya replies. “You’re good.”

“I was in the army.”

He rolls his shoulders, and Olympe feels a sharp ache between her shoulder blades.

Natalya nods again, and then it’s Olympe herself in front of her, and all the aches become so much more pronounced. The scratch on her forehead burns, her hands feel cramped and scraped. She winces, knees buckling slightly.

She’s caught around the waist by Natalya, and they both sink to their knees, Natalya’s arms wrapping around her as the woman hides her face in her shoulder.

“I’m so sorry,” she mutters. “I’m so sorry, Olympe, I should have known they’d find me. It was selfish of me to come here, I should never have—”

Olympe strokes her hair with trembling hands. This is the first time they’ve touched this much, and she is overwhelmed by that as much as by Natalya’s words.

“It’s alright,” she tries to soothe her. “It’s alright, I don’t blame you.”

Natalya pulls back a little, looking at her. “They hurt you.”

“It’s okay. It’s nothing I can’t handle, Natalya.” She reaches up to stroke the hair away from the woman’s face.

“You shouldn’t have to,” she says, so softly that it’s hard to hear. “It’s me they were here for. You shouldn’t have to fight my battles. You and Tuomi, and everyone… I don’t fucking deserve this.”

Shaking her head, Olympe says, “That’s not a question at all. You do.”

Her breathing is shaky. “I need to leave.”

“We both do. They know me now. And I’m not leaving you.”

Natalya curses under her breath. She feels so guilty that Olympe’s heart aches for her.

“There are six places around the world where we are welcome.”

“And bring the others into this? No.”

“It’s too late for that now.”

“She’s right,” says Alin, sitting on the kitchen counter. “You know, there’s enough space over here for both of you.”

“You’d have to explain to your brother where they came from,” Leon replies. “And Stefan.”

“Hm, true.”

“No,” Natalya breathes. “We can’t— I can’t do that.”

“It’s really the best solution,” Eduard puts in from behind Olympe. She looks over her shoulder at him. “You need to get away for sure, and no one is going to expect you to go to a random person in, you know, Romania or Hong Kong or Estonia. Speaking of which, I’d gladly offer up some space of my own.”

One of the intruders groans, and Natalya tenses. Her arms are still around Olympe’s waist, but her hands are balled into fists.

“We have to go,” she says. “Now. We’ll decide where later.”

Before she can pull away fully, Olympe pulls her into a proper hug one more time, pressing her nose into her light hair.

“We’ll pull through,” she says. “We’re here for you.”

* * *

Just when Eduard finally feels a little rested, this happens. He will do it gladly, of course, but taking two people in is not a light feat. Nevertheless, Natalya and Olympe need a place to lie low, and he is the most logical choice, since Alin and Tuomi have other people to think about and the rest is rather far away. It’ll be nice, actually, he thinks, to have some company that is _there_. He does hope his friends and family will refrain from paying unannounced visits, because he’s not sure how he’s going to explain having two foreign women living with him.

He doesn’t understand exactly what happened, but apparently, Natalya’s employers somehow found out where she was staying. Eduard doesn’t know how they did that, but he guesses an organization that kills people as its main activity is bound to have resources.

That other organization is also still on his mind, because not only are he and David targets, it seems they are _all_ in danger. And they can’t do much about it.

Eduard hauls the last things from the guest room into his own bedroom. Either Natalya or Olympe will have to sleep downstairs, but he has the feeling Natalya might like to anyway, to have more oversight of his house.

He sighs and sits down on his bed, then lets himself fall to his back. So he’ll have to keep an eye on David, Tuomi asked him if he could find out where his husband’s cousin’s— What was it again? Where his husband’s cousin’s best friend’s brother, who’s also a Sensate, has disappeared to, he’s got Olympe and Natalya arriving shortly, his hacking circle has been looking for new jobs, and he’s expected to turn up to work again in a few days too. In addition, his mother’s birthday is coming up, so he needs to buy something for her.

Pushing his hair away from his forehead, Eduard tries to calm himself down. He tells himself firmly that he _can_ do it, he has enough help both from the Cluster and from his direct surroundings.

In a way it’s flattering, the fact that they all rely on him to be their information source. He only hopes he can keep it up.

Maybe Olympe and Natalya can help.

* * *

Leon isn’t entirely sure what use he can be to his Cluster at the moment, other than trying to get as much information from Yao as he possibly can. So that’s exactly what he does. Mei, who’s confused and maybe a little jealous about the link, has offered to help in any way she can, so he can use her curiosity as a good excuse to ask his uncle about his Cluster. He finds out there is a member somewhere in Germany and that he and Helena had gone to look for Marco in Italy following his disappearance. There is a vague mention of a woman in Egypt, but Leon doesn’t find out more. Yao isn’t very talkative on the whole subject.

Mei also asks Leon about his own Cluster, and he finds he’s a little hesitant himself. It’s such a personal thing, after all. She does figure out it’s not technically _him_ that’s finally been winning video games from her and proclaims him a dirty cheater while he grins smugly.

Meanwhile, he also has to practice with Thencewind. It is great to be able to do what he truly loves with people who are just as enthusiastic. They have a small show at the end of the week, a sort of open mic night at a local hotel. He’s looking forward to it.

* * *

“Italy?” Tuomi echoes. “But why would he be in Italy?”

“I can only tell you what the data tell me,” Eduard says, “which is that Egil Thomasson’s phone was last used in Venice, Italy, and I’m not going to dig deeper because I don’t want to be caught.”

“No, of course. Thank you, Eduard. I understand you’re busy.”

Eduard smiles. “It’s certainly a burden to be this smart.”

Tuomi laughs, and then he is back in his own living room.

Italy? A thought surfaces about someone or something being in Italy, something important, but he can’t place it. Is Italy dangerous? Should he worry about Egil? Maybe he ought to tell Sigurd and Christian just how he can communicate with him, but he doesn’t know if they know about Egil being a Sensate, or if they would believe him at all. Sigurd, maybe; he’s always seemed inclined towards the mystical, but Christian has a good dose of practical Oxenstierna genes and will need evidence that cannot be readily given.

Well, he’ll see about that.

He opens and closes his prosthetic hand. It’s so weird to be able to use it when borrowing someone else’s body – and isn’t that just the weirdest sentence he’s ever thought? To be honest, he was worried it would bring back the phantom pain of the first few months, but if anything, it’s settled even more. He’s always aware on some level that it’s not his own hand he’s using.

That only makes it weirder, doesn’t it?

“Dad!” Peter yells. “Look! I drew a flyboat! It’s a boat but it flies!”

Tuomi smiles and gets up to look at his son’s masterpiece.

* * *

“Hey, Alin?”

“Hm?” Alin looks up at Luca, who’s sitting on the couch playing with his phone. They have Wi-Fi now, installed yesterday for only a minor addition to the rent, and it’s perfectly stable so far. He doesn’t have a smartphone himself, but his laptop works just as well. Which is a miracle if he’s ever seen one, because the thing is over eight years old. He remembers he got it from his parents when he went to university. That was before all the shit hit the fan.

Luca clasps his hands. “Okay, I’m gonna regret asking this but I’m curious – do you have a crush on Stefan?”

Alin drops his – thankfully empty – coffee mug.

 _No, I don’t_ , he wants to yell, because he was trying so hard to at least not let the stupid crush show. Don’t laugh too much at Stefan’s dry jokes that he sometimes doesn’t even realize are funny, don’t look too long, do not I repeat _do not_ look at his ass in those black pants especially not if he’s bending over, for god’s sake Alin. Maybe if he ignores it, it’ll go away.

“I… Guess that’s enough of an answer,” Luca says sheepishly. “But that’s not so bad, is it?”

Fuck. “Not on itself,” Alin mumbles, picking up his mug. There’s a chip off the edge. “How did you notice?”

With a shrug, Luca replies, “Not sure. A combination of things, I think? Mostly the way you look at him when you think no one’s gonna notice. You get this look that I’ve never seen before. But you know, I don’t really wanna talk about it? It’s just awkward.”

“Yeah. I guess.” He sits on the edge of the coffee table.

“I do want to say, just, I think it’s fine, and uhm, if… If it’d make you happy to be with him, you should go for it? I mean, he’s cool and you don’t always have to take care of me now…”

Suddenly on the verge of tears, Alin stands up again to go hug his little brother, who starts protesting immediately but makes no real effort to keep him away.

“Thank you, Luca,” he says. “That means a lot to me.”

“Sure thing,” Luca replies, muffled into Alin’s sweater. “Now let go of me, please.”

“No.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ALSO FEATURING (sort of)  
> Marco Vargas – the Roman Empire
> 
> Also, a cat named Wellington.  
> (They had a cat before named Alligator. David was not allowed to name the new cat.) (Not that that helped.)


	5. time we took a stand

David has started to get restless.

This whole running away thing is against his character, against everything he believes in. Problems, he’s always believed, should be faced. _This_ is not solving anything. But what can he do about the situation? Go back and confront Russell, thereby outing himself as a Sensate? And incorrectly as the person who stole those documents? That seems dangerous. They don’t know what InGRes want, anyway. Then again, he might be able to get more information from the other side, so if he let himself be taken in…

His thoughts drift to Angélique, and what she would say.

He can’t put his finger on the connection they seem to have, something beyond what he has with the rest of the Cluster. He doesn’t see why it should feel different, but it does. Any other situation, he’d say he was in love. The description fits at the same time that it doesn’t, because it goes deeper than that, which is no wonder considering they’re literally part of each other.

It’s a little like what he feels for Riley, except with a decidedly romantic edge.

David grimaces, remembering the one time he and Riley tried the romantic edge. They were each other’s first kiss, purely out of curiosity, and it remained the strangest thing David had ever experienced up until the Cluster was birthed.

Nevertheless. Angélique probably wouldn’t encourage him jumping into danger like that, just like Riley wouldn’t. As much as Riley encourages him to take risks, they usually do tell him to stick to the necessary ones, these days. He’s sure he can find another way to learn more about InGRes’s business.

In fact.

“Riles?” he asks.

Riley looks up from their notebook in the passenger seat. “Yeah, that’s me.”

“Those documents you stole, was there a return address on those?”

“Ye-es…” A glance to the side reveals an apprehensive look. “Dave, what are you planning?”

“Maybe we should pay a visit,” he says, squaring his jaw and focusing on the road ahead, shimmering with heat. “It’s time we took a stand.”

A second of silence. Then, “You know, if this were a film, undoubtedly the scene would have cut right there and jumped to a neat montage, but you do realize that that’s a terrible idea. I don’t think they do tours of the bloody place, nah?”

“I don’t like this! I’m running away and I don’t even know what from! At least, I want to understand why I have to be afraid.”

“Dave, listen— Okay, stop the car, mate.”

So David does, and Riley unbuckles their seatbelt, leans over the console and grabs his face. Their expression is uncharacteristically serious, so David listens.

“Dave, listen,” they start again, “I love you, but you’re giant bloody idiot, okay? You can’t gallivant into danger just like that.”

David raises his eyebrows. “Maybe it’s not that dangerous. Maybe this is all a misunderstanding.”

“Do you believe that?”

“No,” he admits. Leon’s uncle really was in pain, and anything that makes the link fuzzy cannot be good.

“So,” Riley says, still holding his face between their small hands. “I can’t let you just go to wherever and break in or whatever you’re _not_ planning.”

“Riles, I feel useless,” he complains. Their hands are starting to get sweaty, which is very uncomfortable. “I don’t like that.”

“I get it.” They finally let go, wiping their hands on David’s shirt before sitting back and looking straight ahead. “We need a plan.”

Silence.

“ _What_?” David asks.

“Cue montage!” Riley exclaims.

* * *

Natalya has always prided herself on being a quick learner. This was useful in her ballet not-career, her former life, and it is useful now, because being able to help Eduard out with gathering information necessary for the rest of the Cluster is making her feel a little less guilty about taking up the man’s space.

It’s been… Surprisingly peaceful, those past few days in Estonia. She’s only ever been to Estonia once before, and very briefly, because her target was on the move.

Olympe has been playing the piano in the living room and keeping up with her poker games online. Eduard is busy helping David, and Natalya is learning.

She’s been tempted, for the first time in years, to look up her family. She started to type her sister’s name once, but never got further than _Iriny_. Olympe found her staring at the computer screen after it had gone dark, and wrapped her arms around Natalya’s shoulders without a word.

From Eduard, Natalya can tolerate the occasional touches. He’s not very tactile anyway, and she can anticipate the occasional hand on her shoulder as he explains something to her. But from Olympe, she likes it. She’s come to relish the hugs and the shoulder clasps and even their hands brushing from time to time. It’s the most non-hostile contact she’s had in years. Olympe herself doesn’t touch people all that much either, or at least she doesn’t touch Eduard as much as she does Natalya, so Natalya feels honored, in a way, that they can share something like that. It gives her hope that she might, one day, be able to live a normal life again.

Maybe with Olympe, her mind adds, but she shies away from that thought. First things first.

 _Irinya Braginskaya_.

Search.

* * *

It’s the last day of the Christmas holidays. Torbjörn is getting back to work and Peter and Lars are going back to school tomorrow, but today, they’ve all gone to see a movie to celebrate the last free day.

Well – both his sons are actually rather eager to go back to school and see their friends from out of town again, Tuomi thinks, but still.

During the pause in the movie, he goes to the bathroom, and when he’s washing his hand, he looks up in the mirror and sees Egil standing behind him, silently.

“Fucking _hell_ ,” he hisses, clutching his heart. “Give a guy some warning!”

“I’m sorry,” Egil says, but he looks faintly amused, in much the same way his brother did last Christmas when Christian choked on a candy cane.

Tuomi quickly checks that there is no one in the stalls before saying, “So what’s up? You worried quite some people. Were you really in Italy?”

“Yes,” Egil says shortly, not questioning how Tuomi knows this. “You know, you can pretend to talk on your phone if you don’t want to seem insane.”

Smart but irrelevant. “Why were you there?”

“I was here,” he says, and their surroundings change to an unfamiliar house, light and full of paintings and art supplies and clutter, “because my help was needed. That’s Feliciano.”

A young, auburn-haired man, puttering about in the kitchen, waves at Egil’s wrong side. Egil rolls his eyes, and the man grins broadly. Whatever he’s cooking, Tuomi can’t smell it.

“And?”

“And he’s a Sensate, a member of my Cluster. His grandfather, who’s also a Sensate, disappeared. Feliciano didn’t want to be alone while he was away, and while he looked for him, so he asked someone to come and help him out. I was the one closest without pressing responsibilities.”

“You could have told at least your brother where you were. Or _someone_. You have friends, right? Just – tell them you’re visiting a friend in Italy.”

Now, Egil looks slightly sheepish. “I realize… It was stupid of me, but you must know how intense feelings from the Cluster can be. And, I was afraid I’d have to explain to Sigurd how I know Feliciano, and Sigurd has this way of… Of pulling the truth out of me, even if I don’t want to share it.”

“He doesn’t know you’re a Sensate?”

He shakes his head. “He’s never needed to know. And this is something that belongs to me. I love Sigurd, don’t get me wrong, but I need to have my own life too, and sometimes he’s just too omnipresent for that.” He sighs.

“I think I understand where you’re coming from. But that doesn’t make it okay to just disappear without a trace.”

“I know.”

The thought about Italy surfaces again.

“What’s the name of Feliciano’s grandfather?”

“Marco Vargas, why?”

Something clicks, but he still can’t put his finger on it. “Nevermind. Did you find him?”

“Two members of his Cluster did. This organization got him, and they did something to him. No one understands, least of all him, but it’s like they pulled some of his Sensatedom out of him, like it’s some sort of…” He wriggles his fingers, frowning. “Some sort of stuff that you can extract. This is why I’m studying music theory. I’m not good with words.”

Tuomi understands, and he has the feeling this might be key information to something that’s bigger than all three of those Clusters combined.

* * *

The return address on the InGRes documents is in Australia. The facility that it leads David and Riley to hovers on the outskirts of Sydney’s industrial zone, an old building only marked by a small signpost pointing at the entrance. InGRes, biological engineering, it says. David thinks that sounds a little shady despite knowing that it’s a perfectly legitimate branch of biology, he learned that much during all those years he spent studying.

To think he’s risking his career for this…

He and Riley and the rest of the Cluster don’t know what’s inside, but at least there are people coming and going every day, so it’s _something_ , that’s for sure.

Tuomi has warned him not to look anyone in the eye in case they happen to be a Sensate, because then a connection would be set up between that person and David, and they probably don’t want that. Leon was, at this point, enlightened about his connection with his uncle. And then there was something about Tuomi’s husband’s cousin’s best friend’s brother’s Cluster member’s grandfather, but David stopped listening at that point.

“David?” Angélique asks. He raises his eyebrows at her from where he is lying on his back on the beach near her house, where he’s gone since it’s nicer there than in his own hotel room.

“Do you think I could talk to Riley for a second?” she asks.

“Riley? I guess. Why?”

She shrugs, brown eyes flitting away.

“Angélique?” He props himself up into a sitting position and reaches for her arm, which is warm and soft and dotted with freckles. She leans into his hand, looking back up at him.

“I just… I’ve never really met them, and I know you love them but I just want to know who they are… Who’s gonna be there when you’re— The whole InGRes thing, you know.”

“Oh,” he breathes.

“I’m sorry, I know it’s stupid, and it’s not that I don’t trust Riley because you do so it must be alright but I – I care about you and I want to know that—”

He pulls her against himself, because he can feel her sincerity and he wants her to know that it’s alright.

“If you want to talk to Riley, that’s fine. I think they’d like it.” He chuckles. “It’d be a bit like meeting your in-laws.”

She huffs a laugh in response, resting her head against his chest, curly hair spilling over his shoulder. A deep contentment settles in his chest. The birds in the forest behind them scream so loud that he can barely hear her next words.

“Except we’re not a couple.”

He doesn’t respond, and she looks up at him. She’s beautiful, David thinks. The sun makes her hair and her eyes glow, her red dress offsets her dark skin tone in the most vivid way and the freckles are just adorable. He wonders what it would be like to actually be _with_ her, if the warmth would be more tangible, the connection stronger.

“David?”

No, they’re not a couple, but she’s beautiful and kind and she cares about him, so David tilts his head to brush his lips over her forehead, thinking _what if we were_?

* * *

“I studied anthropology!” Leon exclaims. “I’m not useful, at least not in this. That’s okay. You don’t have to keep trying to, like, include me in those plans. I’ll be here if I’m needed. Hey, I can be moral support, how about that?”

Eduard sighs. “Fine, fine.”

“Thanks.” It’s true; on this point, Leon is the least useful member of the Cluster. His talents just lie elsewhere than breaking and entering, he supposes. That doesn’t sound like something negative at all.

David and Riley are all set to break into the InGRes facility in Sydney, and everyone is ready to help out with whatever skills they possess. Leon is hoping very hard Yao is not going to wake up and check on him, because there’s a reason he hasn’t told his uncle about the Cluster’s plans. The man will be furious when he finds out. He’s warned Leon to stay out of danger so often. If he’s in a malicious mood – which is extremely rare – he’ll add that Leon will end up like his parents if he keeps it up.

Something at the back of his mind tells Leon that David is inside the facility, Alin, Eduard and Natalya having helped him get there. The only thing he’s getting from Angélique is a hum of worry. It’s cute, her and David, and the content feeling the two of them emit when they’re together.

He can sort of – follow along with David, who parts from Riley, because they want to cover as much ground as possible. It looks a little like a hospital here, which gets rather mixed emotions from the Cluster, but David feels right at home and barrels on without hesitation. Leon watches him choose a door seemingly at random and open it. It’s a small office. David purses his lips and exits the room again.

Alin, down the hall, says, “Over here.”

David – and with him, Leon – march over to him. This door is locked, which is a good sign as far as uncovering hidden things goes. David nods, then raises his eyebrows at Leon and Alin in question.

“I don’t know how to open this,” Alin says. “Sorry. I’ve only ever been a petty thief, you know.”

Leon shrugs. The only lock _he’s_ ever picked is the lock on his sister’s diary, when he was younger, and that was by breaking it off.

“I can do it,” Angélique says. “Give me a minute.”

It’s a rather old-fashioned lock with lots of bolts and handles, but Angélique opens it with quick, skilled fingers. All of them but really only David step into a room that looks the most like a hospital out of anything they’ve seen so far. There are a few beds, only three of them occupied by sleeping people hooked up to several machines. Leon doesn’t know what any of those are for, but David must—

A wave of confusion. David doesn’t recognize the machines either. The three people look okay, very still but obviously alive, not really sick. A shiver runs down Leon’s spine. He doesn’t like this at all.

“Any idea?” Angélique asks David, her hand on his forearm. He shakes his head, thick eyebrows furrowed.

“Nothing good,” he whispers. He squints at the nearest machine’s readings, tilting his head this way and that, peers into a patient’s – patient’s? – face and inspect the wires that connect to them. He looks concerned. He _feels_ concerned, and he’s shaking his head. When he picks up a file from a bedside, he purses his lips and frowns.

Eduard sweeps past, reporting, “Someone’s here for the night shift, so I’m gonna have to turn the alarm back on or you’re gonna have to risk being caught when they notice it’s off.”

David grimaces. “We’ll get out of here. I don’t like this.” He pulls his new phone out of his pocket and takes a picture of the room.

What the hell is happening to those people?

Without conscious thought, Leon has apparently followed David back to the main hall, where the man looks around quickly. He’s remarkably calm, but maybe that’s because of his job.

“Riley went there,” Leon remembers, pointing at the far right corridor. David nods his thanks and goes in too. He sees Riley immediately, because they’re standing in the middle of the corridor, along with a woman in a white coat, who is holding their forearm. David hisses a curse and retreats hastily.

“Eduard?”

The man in question is shaking his head next to Leon. “She was faster than I thought she would be. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Leon tells him, because David is too busy running his hands through his hair nervously. It’s not Eduard’s fault.

“Fuck, what now?” David whispers. “I’m not leaving them here. Who knows what the hell they’ll do to them.”

 “I think that is my cue,” says Olympe. She is in David’s place, and plucks a coat from a hook next to the nearest door, puts it on, and walks into the corridor with purpose. Like she belongs there.

The woman looks up, yawning behind her hand and narrowing her eyes in confusion. Riley doesn’t say anything, thankfully. David hovers behind Olympe as she nears the both of them.

“Oh, good,” Olympe says when she is within earshot of the InGRes employee. “You have found them.”

“Them?” the woman asks, looking around in confusion, obviously expecting someone else to be waiting around in the shadows. Olympe shoots Riley an apologetic look, then says,

“I’ve been looking for him. I do not know how he got out of his bed.”

“Right… Yeah, of course.” The employee yawns again. Olympe isn’t looking at her face, but at her coat. “My eyes are up here, you know,” she huffs, but she’s puffing out her chest as she says it. Of course, Leon realizes, she’s seeing David. He’d have a similar reaction, no doubt, especially if he were as tired as she seems to be.

“I apologize,” Olympe says. “You look beautiful, but I have to go. Allow me to take this person back to his room.”

The woman smiles a little, flattered. “Of course,” she replies. Natalya is rolling her eyes behind her, and Leon smiles to himself.

“Have a good night,” Olympe says, then scuttles off, holding Riley’s arm. They quickly reach the main hall, leaving the InGRes employee standing slightly confused in the middle of the corridor. They are lucky she is so tired. Leon doubts they would have gotten off so easily if she had been alert.

“Dave?” Riley asks uncertainly.

“Olympe Castil, it’s a pleasure to meet you. Thank you for playing along. We have to get out now, before she realizes something is off.”

“Leon, what’s going on?” Mei asks. The InGRes facility melts away, leaving Leon’s bedroom and the endless Hong Kong noise.

“No!” he groans. “Fuck off, Kitty.”

“Wow, rude,” she comments. “Are you okay?”

“Later!” Come on, come _on_.

The noise morphs into silence.

“—And I hope I didn’t offend you,” Olympe is saying. Leon silently thanks the ancestors for helping him get back. They are nearly outside now, and Olympe is still holding Riley’s arm. She is also still wearing the white coat.

“No, it’s fine. It confused her even more, I think. I understand that was important,” says Riley, who’s seemingly trying very hard not laugh out loud. This all must have been ridiculous to them, with David acting so out-of-character. Like if Mei suddenly became the most serious person on earth.

Speaking of Mei.

“Leon, seriously, what’s going on?”

* * *

Eduard only notices he’s nearly asleep when he almost slams his forehead into his keyboard. He veers back up, hoping that no one saw that, and especially not his boss.

It’s one thing to be connected to someone on the other side of the world during the holidays, but now that work has started again, it might become something of a problem. He feels sluggish and can’t focus on the numbers on his computer screen.

“Are you alright?” his coworker asks. She’s leaning back in her chair. He smiles at her, trying to stifle a yawn.

“Just a little tired.”

She wriggles her eyebrows, and why must she make everything into an innuendo? Eduard decides not to comment, instead trying to get back to his work. Accountancy may not be the most interesting thing in the world, but it is necessary, and it’s not so bad. Sometimes, he gets to help struggling businesses crawl out of their pit, and that makes up for the boring days.

When he gets home, early in the evening, his house smells delicious, and to his surprise, he finds Olympe and Natalya in the kitchen, cooking something that bubbles red and smells sweet yet spicy.

“Good evening, Eduard,” Olympe greets, polite as ever. “I hope you don’t mind us using your kitchen.”

“No, of course not!”

“Leon helped a little,” she explains. “I’m afraid neither of us is very good at cooking.”

Natalya is smiling a small, genuine smile that Eduard has only seen a few times before. It’s always paired with a strong emotion coming from her, and followed by a sense of confusion, like she’s not sure what to do about that emotion.

He trips over his shoelaces, having forgotten that he already unlaced them, and only just keeps upright. He’s definitely going to bed early tonight. David and Riley can sift through what they found out alone, or with the help of someone who’s supposed to be up. Which means Leon, but Leon is smart, so he’d be a good choice anyway. Not that the rest of them are stupid. What was he thinking about again?

“Eduard, I want to ask you something,” Natalya says from behind him, and he jumps. He didn’t hear her coming.

“God— Sorry, yes, ask away.”

“How can I find out more about my family? Like the things that you found about the Cluster, not just social media.”

“Your family?” He rubs his eyes behind his glasses. “Well, there are several options. How about I show you after dinner?”

“I would like that.”

Eduard looks down the hall and finds that Olympe is looking at them with a fond expression on her face, shiny pink lips in a smile. When she notices him watching, she glances away, adjusting her glasses in a gesture that he recognizes as a bad excuse to divert one’s attention.

It’s funny how this connection can lead to things beyond itself.

* * *

“So – psycellium,” Riley is saying. “That’s what makes you, _you_? It’s something in your body?”

“Apparently,” David says, his voice deep and thoughtful. Angélique can feel it rumble around his body because she’s leaning on his shoulders, watching along as he and Riley try to figure out what they found in the InGRes facility.

“And they’re _extracting_ it from other Sensates?”

David shudders, and though Angélique shares his horror, she tries to soothe him, running a hand down his arm.

“I mean, that’s, like, a whole new level of weird, you gotta admit, mate.”

“Yes,” he says. He leans his head back against Angélique’s shoulder. “It’s terrifying.”

Riley runs a hand through their hair. Angélique still hasn’t talked to them, but she doesn’t really need to anymore, she thinks. She wouldn’t mind, sure, but it’s alright like this. If she wants them to know something, she can tell David. Besides, it’s sort of amusing looking at them trying to find the right place to watch in order to catch her eye.

“So what are they going to do with the psycellium?” Riley wonders. “Can you sell something like that?”

“You can sell everything if you know who’ll buy it.”

“Good point. So then the question is who would buy it. What can you do with it?”

“Maybe,” Angélique starts, and David holds up a hand to signal to Riley that she’s talking, “if you… Administer it to someone else, they become part of the Cluster. Like, if Riley were to – I don’t know, would they inject it or something?”

David nods. “Probably. So you’re saying if we were to inject Riley with psycellium extracted from me, they’d become part of our Cluster. That’s what you think?”

Taken aback, Riley says, “I think I missed an important part of that conversation. Inject me with psycellium?”

“Hypothetically,” David amends, and they look relieved. “That does sound logical. But then I would not be anymore, since it is gone from my body.”

Angélique stands up straight and starts to pace around the small hotel room. The air is heavy with heat and drought, and a fan drowns out the sound of a nearby highway.

Something about her own explanation bothers her. If it were that simple, then surely there would be more legitimate ways of obtaining the psycellium, and there surely would be more buzz about it. She’s not in the medical field, of course, but that just seems off.

“Can I, like, add something?” Leon asks from where he’s suddenly sitting on one of the beds. “Yao told me, in the beginning, that Sensates are a different kind of human, or maybe not even human per say. It’s something genetic – so it’s more likely to occur in certain families, too, like with me, or that man from Yao’s Cluster and his grandson. I think that means you’d need something more than just some stuff you extract. We’re, like, a different species.”

Maybe, Angélique thinks, her mother was a Sensate and she just never knew. She doesn’t think that’s true, to be honest, but as always, the thought that she might be like her mother in more ways than she realizes is a soothing one.

Wait. She’s not human? Angélique sways a little on her feet. She’s not human. No wonder God wouldn’t answer her prayers, she thinks. How could He listen to someone who isn’t even human?

“You know,” David says softly, strong arms catching her around the waist, “even if we’re not human, then God would still have created us, right? Doesn’t He love all His creations equally?”

She knows he doesn’t believe in God, but he’s right, of course. She takes a deep breath and looks up at him. He’s smiling.

Riley clears their throat. “Sorry to interrupt the moment… Of you embracing thin air. But it says here there are volunteers.”

“Uhm.” David coughs and removes his arms, though he remains close to Angélique. “Volunteer is a flexible term.”

“It’s really not. You either volunteer or you don’t.”

“But if given the choice between that, or being taken by force…”

Riley sighs. “ _You’d_ choose to be taken by force, Dave, I know you, you’re stubborn as a bloody mule.” The next part is aimed at David’s chest, so probably actually at Angélique. “One time, he got his head stuck in a fence and he sat there for half a day because he didn’t want me to get his parents.”

“Riles!”

They laugh. “He was twelve.”

“It was a really narrow fence!” David tries to defend himself. “And you just sat there and laughed at me, anyway.”

“Yeah, it was _funny_.” Riley shrugs, as if to say _of course I laughed_.

“I don’t know why I’m friends with them,” David tells Angélique, who laughs, too.

“Because I have the best hair this side of the equator,” Riley replies, without missing a beat.

David huffs into Angélique’s own hair. “You obviously haven’t seen hers.”

She starts to blush.

* * *

The old-fashioned doorbell rings, extremely loud in the empty hall. Alin quickly gathers his hair, which he still hasn’t cut, in a bun while he goes to open the door. It’s rather lonely in the house when Luca is at school, if he’s honest, but at least here there’s things to do other than listen to the neighbors argue. There are many things to do, actually, both here and halfway across the world.

“Hi!”

“Stefan, hello!” Alin grins. Instant happiness wells up in his chest at the sight of Stefan fidgeting before his own front door, because it’s endearing as fuck. “What brings you here?”

“I, uh…” He bites his lip. “I was wondering if I could measure the window frames.”

“Sure, go a— Didn’t you measure those yesterday?”

“I… Must have forgotten.”

No, Alin is pretty sure he came here yesterday for the _sole purpose_ of measuring the window frames, so the chance that he’s forgotten is very slim. He very quickly squashes the thought that bubbles up about why Stefan could really be here – because he wanted to see Alin. They’re certainly becoming friends, something about them clicks, but that doesn’t mean Stefan doesn’t have better things to do than check up on him. He still has a job to do, after all.

“But come in anyway, I think it’s gonna rain,” he says, stepping aside so Stefan can enter the hall, which is so high and so empty that it nearly echoes. “So do you wanna do the windows again, just to be sure, maybe?”

Stefan smiles. “No, I’m sure it’s fine. How’ve you been? You were very busy yesterday.”

See, he does remember. Alin takes Stefan’s coat without second thought, hanging it over the stair railing where his also is. It’s warm and carries a faint smell of aftershave despite the stubble still on Stefan’s chin.

“I _was_ busy. The attic is empty now, I got some… Some stuff you might wanna look at.” Alin touches his tongue to his front teeth, thinking. “I don’t think there’s anything else that’s important.”

They walk into the room that now functions as the living, with Alin’s old couch against one wall and a heap of junk against the other. If it were summer, he’d have put it outside, but at the moment, the weather is too changeable to risk anything that might not be able to handle rain. Alin can’t wait for summer, if he’s honest.

As if on cue, the first raindrops hit the narrow windows.

“Ah, great, I’ll look at that, but I didn’t mean the house. How have _you_ been? Are you… I don’t wanna sound weird, but are you happy here?”

Alin swallows. It’s hard to tamper down on his feelings when Stefan is making it so easy to like him. “Yeah. Yeah, I am. Thank you, again. I owe you.”

The man just shakes his head, sitting down at the table where Alin was before. He steeples his fingers.

“I wanted to ask you something,” he says. Alin sits down next to him, raising his eyebrows. “The house, what do you reckon I should do with it?”

“Why are you asking me? It’s your house.”

He laces his fingers together, and it’s all Alin can do not to stare as his mind comes up with thoughts about how they would feel on his skin.

“Everyone I know is saying I should sell it, but I’m just not sure. And I’m a consultant, I know how important second opinions can be. You can offer a different perspective, and you know the house by now.” He glances down at his hands. “Besides, I think you’re a smart man. You might have a good idea.”

Alin trills with pride, despite himself. “Well, I _was_ thinking the other day that you have enough room in this place to start a decent hotel, but that’s not a very realistic thing, is it?”

“Oh!” His face lights up. “That’s true, you could put a whole lot of people in here. And with the yard, and considering the location… It’d make a good bed & breakfast, don’t you think?”

“Hm-hm.” He didn’t expect that response. “So if you do want to sell it, you can advertise it like that.”

“Or maybe I won’t sell it.” Stefan leans into Alin’s space enthusiastically. “Maybe I’ll just do it myself. It’d be nice to do something like that.”

Alin holds on to the edge of the table. “Yes, I suppose it would.”

Their eyes meet, and for a moment, they’re in a sort of stasis while the rain beats against the windows. Stefan is so close. The scent of aftershave clings to his skin, barely masking the lingering cigarette smoke. Alin can feel the slightest hint of breath skating over his neck, and his heart is pounding way too hard.

“Yes,” Stefan breathes. His gaze drops, but then he is back in his seat in an instant, clearing his throat. Alin is out of breath all of a sudden.

“Yes,” Stefan repeats. “So. I’ll think about that.”

“You do that.”

“Yeah, I will.”

“Yeah.”

* * *

Eduard has been cleaning his glasses for five minutes now. Something is probably wrong. Natalya turns to Olympe, who’s watching him too, expression concerned over the edge of her laptop.

“Eduard?”

The man looks up, eyes wide as if he forgot they are still here, almost playing house with him. He quickly puts his glasses on.

“Yes?”

“Are you alright?” Olympe asks. They’re all speaking English now, despite the fact they would be able to understand each other perfectly if they each spoke their own language, or if Natalya and Eduard spoke Russian and Olympe French. But they decided, in order to avoid things getting lost in translation, that English would be a good choice.

“No,” Eduard replies. “I’m not alright. I got an email again.”

Olympe closes her laptop with perfectly manicured fingers.

“InGRes?”

“Yes.” He sighs. “It’s got David’s name in it. Nothing more, just ‘David Clarke’.”

“That isn’t good.”

“They’ve made the connection,” Natalya guesses. “They probably know that both of you are Sensates.”

Eduard leans his head into his hands, pushing his hair back.

How could this have happened? Natalya doesn’t think that thought is hers only, but it is worrying. Someone must have recognized David in Sydney, that seems logical, but the connection to Eduard…

“Or they don’t know,” she says. “It’s a stretch. They want to see what you will do. If you panic, you’re confirming the suspicion.”

He looks up. “That… Sounds logical.”

“Can we not go to the police with this?” Olympe asks quietly. She brushes her fingers through her hair, which is loose for the first time since Natalya has met her. “We shouldn’t have to solve this.”

“They’re not officially doing something illegal, by what we know. And besides, how are we going to make this a case without sounding like lunatics?”

Olympe sighs. “I know. It all seems backwards to me, that’s all. But then again, I studied law, I’m coming at this from a different angle than the rest of us.”

All three of them are silent for a while. The rain obscures the faraway sounds of Tallinn’s evening life, and Eduard types something slowly. Olympe smiles softly at Natalya when their eyes meet.

“I think,” Eduard says eventually. “That the best option is to wait it out for a while.”

Natalya and Olympe both nod, though Natalya feels like it’s really only just begun.

* * *

Tuomi kicks his feet up, scratches his dog behind her fluffy white ears, and opens a book. He stares at the page where he left off, and closes it again. Kukkamuna nudges her head against his side, so he picks her up, putting her in his lap and stroking her fur. She pushes her nose against his prosthetic hand. He sighs.

It’s not that he is unhappy, far from. Tuomi has an amazing husband and sons, good friends around town, a group of extraordinary people around the world, and his mind and body are perfectly – almost perfectly – alright. He’s just _bored_ sometimes. He’s never been able to occupy himself easily in his day-to-day life. Sure, he can sit still and focus on a target for hours on end, but what good is that when you have nothing to focus on? It’s okay when Lars and Peter are home, but now, they are at school most of the time, and they will only become more and more independent as time goes on, and then what? Is he just supposed to hang around and clean the house, play with the dog and look after Torbjörn in his study, where he works?

Tuomi leans his head back on the couch, smiling when Kukkamuna puts her little paws on his chest, jumping excitedly.

What he really needs is a job. There’s no going back to the military, of course, not with his arm, or lack of arm, as it were, but that doesn’t mean he can’t do anything else. The town isn’t big, but surely there’s someone around who needs help.

The dog yips. He picks her up again, holding her up above him.

“I better talk to Torbjörn about this!”

His husband will be happy, Tuomi thinks. He’s only ever wanted the best for Tuomi, after all. Has stuck with him through everything that’s happened in the past five years.

Kukkamuna yips again. Tuomi sets her down, and she starts running circles around the coffee table. He picks up his tablet and hopes there are jobs available.

* * *

Well, it was bound to come out eventually, but Leon would have preferred not to have his uncle hounding on him in the restaurant, when he was just about to leave.

“What were you _thinking_?” Yao exclaims. “Playing vigilante like that! Just because you have a special power doesn’t mean you are a superhero!”

Leon has tried to explain that none of it was his idea – although he doesn’t doubt he would have done the same thing, had he been in David’s place – and that the eight of them together have all the necessary skills to do what they did _anyway_ , but Yao is having none of it. The man would have made a great father, certainly, but as it stands, he’s been using all his parental instincts on Leon and Mei for the past fifteen years, and still does even though both of them are nearly twenty-eight. It’s times like these Leon understands why his sister wants to leave.

“You put your whole Cluster in danger, Leon!”

He nods wearily.

“You don’t know how much it pains all of us that Marco is still so weak. I don’t want something like that happening to you.”

Hoisting his guitar up his shoulders, Leon says, “But David is fine. Listen, uncle, I understand why you’re, like, worried, but everything is fine, and we won’t do it again.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” David puts in casually. Leon tries his best not to look at him or otherwise acknowledge his presence in an attempt to hide the visit from Yao.

Yao sighs. “ _Fine_. Go ahead with your boopy-boop music, then.”

His uncle’s never gotten the hang of Western music, which is infinitely amusing to Leon.

“Thank you,” he says. “Have a good day, uncle.” He bows slightly.

“Be careful, Leon,” is Yao’s only reply.

* * *

“We ought to leave,” Natalya says, after another email pops up on Eduard’s screen. He looks up at her.

“Leave? You two or all of us?”

“All of us.” She glances at Olympe, who hunches her shoulders. She doesn’t know anything about this kind of thing, if this is a common method of intimidation around Eduard’s parts. All she knows is that it is working, at least for her. She’s uneasy.

Natalya bites her cheek thoughtfully, and Eduard is pursing his lips.

“Isn’t that what they want?” he asks Natalya.

Her lip twitches the tiniest bit. “If they wanted to get you somehow, they could have done it by now. Why haven’t they? It isn’t as if we’re particularly well-protected here.”

“They… Hope I’ll provide more information?” Eduard guesses. “Do you think that’s it?”

“If I may,” Tuomi puts in, popping up next to Eduard and leaning on his shoulder with his good arm. “Hi guys. _I_ think they’re really just trying to rile you up enough so that you’ll send a message back or otherwise let them track you. Less is known than you think.” He tilts his head as if listening. “My husband says you’re always welcome here, if you do decide to go on the run.”

 _On the run_. Olympe rubs her hands over her upper arms. She never would have thought she’d ever even be considering going on the run from anything. She has seen it happen in the poker circuit; it is easy to fall in with the wrong crowd in a world like that. Gambles gone wrong, bets made with the wrong people, but she… She is probably the most law-abiding Cluster member, she thinks with slight amusement, what with the hacker and the _former_ assassin and a distant memory of shoplifting some sweets and selling them to other children in the snow at a profit.

Tuomi grins at her. His eyes sparkle. It is so hard to believe he was in the army.

“So you’re saying they probably don’t know who I am? InGRes?” Eduard asks.

“Just my two cents. I’m absolute crap with computers, I have Torbjörn for that, but I know just enough about intimidation techniques to make an educated guess.”

Eduard nods slowly, looking back at his computer. The brightness of the screen turns his eyes a very light turquoise color, like the sea as it is near Angélique’s home. Olympe and Natalya flank him like the little angel and devil on one’s shoulders.

“I still think we should go,” Natalya says. “I do not know much about computers either, but if InGRes know your email address, they can figure out where you are, right?”

That is possible,” Eduard admits.

“So we go under the radar.”

“But my job—”

“Cash in your vacation days. Pretend you’re sick.”

A muscle in Natalya’s jaw twitches, but her face is otherwise unreadable. Olympe wishes she would smile more, much as she understands that she doesn’t. She is so beautiful when she smiles. Not that she isn’t beautiful normally. The rare smiles just add something, something indefinable.

The lightest of touches on her shoulder snaps Olympe from her thoughts.

“What do you think?” Eduard asks, while Natalya’s fingertips still rest on her shoulder. She relishes the contact.

“I apologize, I was not listening,” she says, but she knows the question anyway, and replies, “We should go. I might know someone who can help.”

* * *

Leon seems surprised when Alin starts to applaud at the end of the song, eyes comically wide and eyebrows making a complicated but amusing leap. The man makes a little bow nonetheless.

Alin isn’t sure why he’s here, but maybe it doesn’t always have to be useful. Maybe sometimes it can just be fun. He grins, remembering his weird-but-awesome stint with Angélique and Tuomi. And Tuomi’s husband. He’s thought about that quite often since then. Especially at night.

Anyway. He refocuses and sees that Leon is walking towards him with his phone pressed to his ear. Oh, that’s a good idea, he’ll have to remember that.

“Hey,” he says, leaning against the wall. Leon is dressed fashionably, like Alin wishes he could afford to. Most of his money goes towards Luca. He only has two pairs of pants.

“Hi?” Leon replies. “Are you looking at my ass, or…?”

Alin grins, cracking his hands behind his back. “Not in particular, though I gotta say it’s a pretty nice one.”

Leon shakes his head in amusement. “Glad you think so.”

“That was good music, by the way. Catchy.”

“Thanks!” he beams. It occurs to Alin that the guy doesn’t really smile that much, but he guesses some people just don’t. “Are you here for, like, any particular reason?”

Alin puts his hands in his pockets and shrugs. “It was a little quiet at home, so may—”

Home. He just called the house ‘home’. It is, technically, but he’s never referred to it as such before now. He’s always been cautious, because he knows it’s going to end sooner or later. The word warms his chest at the same time it knocks the breath out of him. It’s been a long while since he – and Luca – had a proper home. Their shitty apartment was always just that; a shitty apartment, a supposed-to-be-temporary place that lasted nearly five years.

“How’s it going with that place?” Leon asks, ignoring that Alin cut himself off.

“Hm? Good, yeah. It cleans up nicely. Could be done before spring.”

Leon raises one eyebrow. Alin tries to push down the fluttery feeling in his stomach that he gets when he thinks about the house, especially in the inevitable combination with Stefan, and _home_. It’s no use, though. He’s always been an emotional person, and this whole psychic thing hasn’t changed that at all.

“ _Very_ nicely,” Leon says, and Alin attempts to glare at him, without much effect. “Hey, it’s fine. More happiness to share, isn’t it?”

Alin nods. “What about you? This all seems pretty cool.”

“It is! We’re doing a gig tonight, and I’m, like, really looking forward to it. Maybe you can catch some.”

There’s an underlying layer of apprehension that Alin has felt from him before, he now realizes. It’s there most of the time.

He can’t place it, but he can put a hand on Leon’s shoulder and say, “Maybe I can. Good luck with that. It’s cool to talk to you.”

“All of you,” Leon amends softly.

Alin grins. “Yeah. All of us.”

* * *

_We’re too late_ , is all Eduard can think before his brain refuses to cooperate any further, because it is busy registering the fact that there is a _gun_ pointed at it. At his face. He can’t move. He can’t think. He hasn’t seen a gun since he finished his conscription, and was really hoping it would stay that way.

They took too long before leaving. InGRes has intercepted them, and not even Olympe is going to be able to sweet-talk her way out of this. They’re so close to the airport.

“Come with us,” says a man in barely accented English, behind the person pointing the gun at Eduard. “No harm will come to you.”

“This must be a mistake,” Olympe tries, which Eduard has to give her credit for, but it’s no use. The man – the leader – scoffs.

Someone passes behind Eduard, so close that he can smell a hint of aftershave. He recognizes David by that alone.

“No one here either,” he says. Eduard is strung too tight to move, or even wonder what he’s talking about. Time seems to slow down; one moment he is staring at the gun, and the next he is looking at Tuomi staring at the gun and David holding Olympe’s bag next to the man. Olympe herself breathes quickly next to Eduard. Only Natalya is still in her proper place.

Everything stays that way for a matter of seconds, or maybe even less, and then all three of them – Tuomi, David, Natalya – throw themselves forward as one. Olympe clings to Eduard’s arm. He can only stare as all three gunmen grapple with his Cluster members, flinch when one of them is kicked in the groin by Natalya, then knocked out and has his gun kicked away, so that it skids into the nearby canal. David is struggling with his opponent. Olympe’s grip tightens every time he takes a hit.

The leader has climbed into his car and is rummaging around.

While Natalya and David try to take on gunman #2, Tuomi has somehow taken #3’s gun with only a minor twinge in Eduard’s shoulder. The anger rolling off of him is so intense that Eduard has to grit his teeth against the urge to hit someone. Tuomi himself seems to be able to focus the emotion, because when the leader emerges from the car carrying a weapon that Eduard doesn’t even want to identify beyond ‘DANGER’, he very calmly raises the gun, takes aim, and shoots.

Olympe muffles a yell, her fingers cutting off the circulation in Eduard’s arm at the same time they are the only thing holding him upright. He loses sight of his surroundings for a moment, because Tuomi just _shot_ someone using his body! His hand was used to shoot a gun. There is a reason Eduard was so glad his conscription was over!

“Eduard.” Hands on his shoulders, then holding his face. “Eduard. It’s just his shoulder. He’ll be fine. David thinks so too.”

It’s quiet, save for the highway’s rushing in the distance and the noise of Eduard’s own breath ringing in his ears, too loud and too fast. Tuomi must think he is a wimp.

“Eduard,” Tuomi repeats. His thumbs stroke slow circles on Eduard’s jaw, soothingly. “You might want to open your eyes.”

Oh. He does, and looks into Tuomi’s concerned brown gaze.

“I’m sorry,” the man says softly. “We had to act quick.”

“No, it’s…” Eduard takes hold of one of Tuomi’s wrists. It’s an intimate gesture, but feels right. “It’s not like I haven’t… Like I haven’t shot a gun before. I was in the army, too.”

“Conscription is nothing like actually being in.” He grimaces. “It’s not as if I enjoyed doing that.”

Eduard shakes his head. Tuomi’s hands finally slip from his face, and he dares to look around. He quickly looks back at Tuomi, because it’s not nice. David is looking at a wound on Natalya’s cheek while Olympe hovers behind her, obviously concerned. And the InGRes people…

They’re quiet for a while as Eduard gets himself under control. Tuomi is not sorry about having shot the man, which he understands but doesn’t condone. It’s causing a mild conflict in his mind.

“You know you had nothing to do with it,” Tuomi tells him. “I take the full blame.”

He nods, taking a last deep breath, then looks over at Natalya and Olympe, who are now leaning against the hood of his car, barely-touching their arms together. Natalya nods at him. Her hair is messy.

“We need to go,” she says.

“Yeah.” Eduard nods, too. They do have a plane to catch, if they get that far. He pushes his glasses up his sweaty nose and walks to the car. They’re getting out of here, but he’s going to call an ambulance first thing when they are.

* * *

Angélique wakes with urgent memories that aren’t hers.

It’s Sunday. She picks clothes for church without paying much attention and goes through the motions of breakfast on autopilot. It’s all starting to get very serious now, isn’t it?

Absently, she checks on Olympe, Natalya and Eduard on their plane to America. She isn’t even amazed by the view from the air.

No, that is a lie. She is. She has never flown before, and it is incredible how she can see the clouds and the sea down below, shimmering dark blue, but it’s not on the forefront of her mind.

Something needs to be done.

* * *

“Something needs to be done,” David concludes his recounting of the events to Riley, who looked more shocked with every word.

“Dave, this is something for the police! Not for a doctor and a writer and – and whatever else those other people are. Don’t say one of them is police.”

He shakes his head. “There is a former army sniper, though.”

“Wow. Wait.” They grab one of their notebooks from their bag and start scribbling something furiously. David waits patiently until they’re done, because he’s used to Riley’s bursts of inspiration by now, as inconvenient as the times at which they come sometimes are.

“But even then,” Riley eventually continues, pen still resting on the paper, “you can’t really stop an international organization with the eight of you, not in real life you can’t. Plus me, of course, which is a great help, but still not enough, mate.”

David opens his mouth, but is forestalled by Alin’s voice coming from next to him, croaking, “They’ve got a point.”

His hair is mussed, and he is wearing a ratty T-shirt with the name of probably a Romanian band on it. It must be night, over there. David wonders if the man was somehow woken up by him. He raises his eyebrows in question.

“There’s eight – or nine – of us, and they’ve got god knows how many people all over the world. We can make plans all we want, but we don’t actually have superpowers.”

“No,” David concedes. “But I’ve never said we have to stop them entirely. I just want to prevent them taking a member of our Cluster like they did those other people.”

“Who’s that?” Riley asks, looking at the space where Alin is sitting on the armrest of the small couch. Alin waves.

“That’s Alin. He’s from Romania.”

They start scribbling again, nodding to themselves. Alin smiles lopsidedly.

“Okay,” he then says, “so hindering InGRes. I can get behind that. I don’t want them to get any of us either.”

It is strange how David has started to think of the Cluster as something beyond friends in such a short amount of time. It hasn’t even been a month, and he doesn’t think he could let go of them now, any more than he could let go of Riley or his family.

“So…” he says, and Alin looks at him while he hides a yawn into his hand.

“So?”

“So something needs to be done,” he re-iterates. “Get those people in Sydney out of there. See if I can obstruct the—”

“We,” Alin interrupts.

“If _we_ can obstruct any research being done.”

Riley is grinning, which is a little worrying. Alin yawns again.

“Go back to sleep,” David tells him, and the man salutes cheekily, then stands up and vanishes in the time it takes David to blink. He tells Riley Alin’s gone, just to avoid awkward non-conversations. They kick their feet up on the table and muss their hair.

“So what now? You’re going back to Sydney?”

Squaring his jaw, David nods. If there is any chance he can do anything about this situation, if only to get himself back to work, he has to do it.

Riley puts their notebook away. “I’m coming with you.”

* * *

Alin didn’t sleep well. The heating has apparently stopped working overnight, which was to be expected considering the state of the house, but that doesn’t make it any less irritating. On top of that, he forgot that the shower obviously wouldn’t heat either, and bruised himself when he jumped away from the icy water.

He’s been silently moping for twenty minutes now. His hair is greasy, and he doesn’t want to shower with cold water, not when it’s so cold outside. Luca, at least, took a shower yesterday evening and went off to school without problems.

“Call your boyfriend,” Tuomi suggests, laughter in his voice.

“What!”

The man grins. “Doesn’t he have a shower you can use?”

“My— Stefan is my boss!”

“Ah, but you know who I meant.” The grin softens into a smile. “You’re not having a gay crisis, are you? Is that why I’m here?”

“No, I’m not having a – a gay crisis, Tuomi! I’m not gay anyway, and I figured it out years ago.”

“I’m not gay either, but still.”

Alin sighs. “I’m not having a crisis and Stefan is not my boyfriend—”

“But you would like him to be.” It’s not a question. He already knows, so Alin doesn’t bother answering. Tuomi continues, “So he’s your boss. Does that matter?”

“It matters if it goes awry,” he answers, wringing his hands into his gross hair. “If the feelings aren’t returned. Or if they are, but it doesn’t work out. I could lose all this.” He gestures at the house. _Home_. “And for all that I know, he’s terribly homophobic and is going to try to have Luca taken away!”

“He doesn’t strike me as the type of person who would let his emotions get in the way like that.”

Alin wants to say that Tuomi doesn’t know Stefan at all, but he does, right? As much as Alin knows him, which isn’t all that much, if he’s honest. He knows Stefan looks gorgeous when he smiles, and that he doesn’t like tomatoes on pizza, and that he needs to wear reading glasses but always forgets them, but that isn’t relevant at all, is it? Those are just stupid facts.

“It is relevant, actually,” Tuomi says. “You notice things like that because you pay attention, beyond what he looks like. More than you think. My husband always scrunches his nose when he’s thinking, and he can’t stand the smell of lavender, and when listens to music he _has_ to move along with it, and I know that because I know him. You know things about Stefan that I think most people take a while to notice. That means something.” He furrows his brow. “I just talked more than I usually do in an entire week.”

Alin laughs abruptly. It’s very loud in the high room. “Okay, so your point is I know him better than I think?”

“Mhm.”

“And…”

“And that’s a good start. It’s not just a crush. You’re in love with him, or getting there.”

That’s not good at all! Not if he wants to maintain any chance of letting it pass.

Tuomi sighs. “Don’t let it pass. Take a chance. Life is fleeting.” He glances at his own prosthetic arm. Alin thinks of his parents.

Life is fleeting.

Tuomi holds Alin’s phone out to him. He takes it, looking at the man, who smiles.

He dials.

“Hi, Stefan. There seems to be a problem with the heating, and I want to ask a favor of you.”

* * *

To say Huang is confused would be a gross understatement.

“Olympe,” he starts softly, when he has her alone in the hall of his house, out of earshot of Natalya and Eduard, “I want to believe you, honestly, when you say you met these people on the Internet, but truth is, I am worried about you. You haven’t fallen in with the wrong crowd, have you? I never thought you would, with your background…” His eyes flicker in concern behind his glasses.

Huang is the only person in this town Olympe would consider a friend. He is a few years older than her, and acted as her guide when she first rolled into the world of professional poker. He’s from Macau, which, from what she’s gathered, is much like Monaco in terms of casinos, so he grew up like her, surrounded by wealth. She has had to consciously prevent herself from talking to him in Chinese.

“No, not… Not in the way you think. Not in… I haven’t got anything to do with criminals.”

Not technically true, something at the back of her mind says. It sounds like Natalya.

Huang is frowning. “Then why are you here? You’re in danger, you said. Are you not putting me in danger?”

“No. No, I wouldn’t do that to you.” Also technically not true, but she hopes it won’t come so far that Huang will be drawn into this mess.

He presses his lips together, but nods.

“Please, do tell me if something is truly wrong, Olympe. I care about you.”

“Of course. Thank you again, Huang.” She turns to walk back to her friends in the living room, but he touches her shoulder lightly.

“That woman,” he says, “Natalya.”

“Yes?”

He smiles. There is a mischievous edge to it, which is unusual. “She is beautiful, isn’t she?”

“Yes,” Olympe mumbles.

“You like her.”

She closes her eyes, and nods.

* * *

Olympe walks back into the living room with Paredes close behind. It takes all Natalya’s willpower to keep from wondering what they talked about. The man has seemingly taken very calmly to having two strangers in his house. He acts like he’s not even bothered.

Natalya turns back to the screen. She and Eduard have taken a break from working on something to help David hinder InGRes’s research, some sort of virus they could get in their network if she understood correctly, to look up more information on Natalya’s family.

She has found out already that her father has passed away years ago. There is a sort of hollowness in her chest where the subconscious hope used to be that she would see him again. But her siblings and her mother, they are alive and well. Her sister lives in Saint Petersburg. She was so close when they were still in Estonia. In fact, Natalya has been in Saint Petersburg several times. Her brother is also in Russia, closer to where they were born in what is nowadays Belarus. They have both changed so much. Her mother still lives in the town where Natalya was born.

The hope that she will see them again has, in some weird way, expanded in her chest to fill some of the emptiness of her father’s death.

First, this whole mess needs to be done with. She can’t hope to start a new life when she has not one, but two shady organizations after her.

“Hello,” Olympe says. Eduard gives a vague hum, busy typing something Natalya can’t make heads or tails of.

“Hi,” Natalya replies, looking up at the other woman. She smiles, shyly. Natalya cannot read her well at the moment.

She bites her lip. “If… If there is any sign that we are putting Huang in danger, we should leave. He’s a good friend, and I don’t want him to get caught up in this. He doesn’t deserve that.”

“Of course,” Eduard mumbles. Natalya nods.

“Good. I’m glad.” Her eyes are shuttered.

“We don’t deserve this either,” Natalya says, surprising herself as much as Eduard and Olympe. She looks at her hands, at her short nails and the calluses and scars on her fingers. “We’re only trying to live our lives.” _Especially_ _you_ , she wants to say to Olympe, but that is too much.

The woman in question is bending over to hug her again. She smells like lavender and her hair is slightly damp when it presses against Natalya’s face. It grounds her.

Eduard resumes his frantic typing, but she can feel that he is happy.

Across the room, Paredes catches her eye, and he smiles a serene smile. For a fraction of a moment, Natalya is sure she feels at peace.

* * *

It frustrates Angélique to no end that she can’t do anything to help David, because her father thought it would be a good idea to take her out fishing. She would have declined if not for the concerned looks she’s been getting from him.

It is nice to spend time with her father, of course, but she’s constantly drifting off, being pulled to Australia until he attracts her attention again. At least she can always feel the pull. That has to be good. That means that David is alright.

Night is falling, the sun setting red behind the island. It looks so tiny, surrounded by the sea on all sides. Angélique knows there are people who are terrified of the sea, but she can’t imagine it. She’s always lived so close to it. The sea is part of her. She couldn’t sleep for the first few nights that she was studying, just because the crashing of the waves wasn’t there. In a way, the pull from David, from the rest of the Cluster, is like that. A soothing, indefinable _something_ at the core of her being, that sometimes pulls her under, only she’ll resurface in Australia or Romania or who knows where.

“Dad,” she starts on impulse, because she wants to share this with him. He deserves to know how happy this gift makes her. He looks at her, his grooved face kind and questioning as always. People always say she has his eyes.

Angélique opens her mouth, then clamps it shut when something snaps inside of her. The connection to David. Like a boat in a storm, it’s pulled away from her, leaving only a gaping hole. She gasps, gripping her father’s boat so hard her fingers cramp. No, this can’t be happening. She closes her eyes tight, tries to reach out to David. There is no one. He’s gone. Out.

“Angélique, love, what is it?” her father asks, shuffling closer to her, taking her painful fingers in his. She opens her eyes. She’s breathing hard.

“Dad, we have to get to the shore.”

“Are you unwell?”

“Yes.”

He draws his eyebrows together. “Then we’ll get back.”

“Thank you, thank you.” Her hands are trembling. She reaches out to the other Cluster members subconsciously.

“What’s going on?” Tuomi shouts through a sheet of snow and darkness. “What happened to David?”

“I don’t know!” Angélique yells back.

“Are _you_ okay?” Alin asks in a hushed voice.

“I don’t know,” Angélique repeats. “I don’t _know_.”

Once they reach the shore, she jumps out of the boat and runs along the coast to where she can see her friend working on his boat.

“Raj!”

He waves.

“Raj,” she starts, panting, “are you – going – to Mahé – soon?”

He frowns, confused. “Yeah, in a few hours. Why?”

“Take me with you. Please.”

“Take— Why?”

She catches her breath for a few seconds, then answers, “I have business to do there.”

“What kind of business? Something to do with your study? Can’t you take the ferry?”

“No. I have to catch a plane to Australia.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ALSO FEATURING  
> Feliciano Vargas – North Italy
> 
> Also I am half convinced Eduard's recurring coworker is actually Hungary, though I didn't do that on purpose.
> 
> Angélique's dad is not any character. I didn't want it to seem really forced or require tons of backwards explaining where I fit certain characters in, so yeah, that seemed logical!


	6. once and for all

There is nothing where David is supposed to be. Or, no, there is. It’s comparable to static on a TV, only two _thousand_ times more irritating and worrying because it’s inside Leon’s head. The rest of the Cluster is a whirlwind of anxiety. Angélique is in Dubai for a layover, and even her wonder at flying for the first time was dimmed by worry.

“What’s got you down?” Taylor asks. She is lying upside down on the couch in her apartment, which doubles as the band’s main practice space. They have been trying to write lyrics all morning, to no avail. The static is not helping Leon concentrate, or maybe it has worked its way to his hands, because nothing is coming out of them. Nothing good, anyway.

“Just… Had a bad night.” Not untrue.

She folds her hands behind her head. “Wanna talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“Mkay. Oh, by the way!” She turns upright, knocking half a dozen pieces of paper to the ground in the process. “The guy from last Friday called, the manager. He wants us again this week.”

“Really?” Leon beams. It was a lot of fun, playing somewhere else than his own street for once. It was also a bit messy, but apparently that doesn’t matter to the manager.

“Yeah, really! Good thing we got you to join.”

She turns upside down again, black hair spilling to the ground. Taylor is… Hard to read, beyond her enthusiasm about music. If he’s honest, Leon is worried about what will happen if his being transgender is ever revealed to her. Because it will be, whether he wants it or not. Every single official body thinks he is a woman; there is no way to hide that forever. The chance she, and the other band members, will be as accepting as Yao and Mei and his Cluster, is extremely small. Leon is not so optimistic that he believes he’ll get off lightly.

He’s had his fair share of hardships because of his gender over the years, but this would be one he’s not sure he could bounce back from so easily.

Like it ever is easy.

“Oh, I got one!” She spreads her hands. “How about ‘condemned to luck’?”

* * *

It occurs to Angélique a little late that she has no idea where to go now that she’s in Sydney. There’s no way of knowing whether Riley is okay, and if they are, _where_ they are. She sits down on the edge of a potted plant, rubbing her eyes. Being on a plane was amazing, even if looking at clouds got quite boring four hours in, and no one told her it would be so exhausting to do nothing for so long. Plus, she feels rather guilty about Olympe having to cough up the money for a plane ticket for her, no matter how often she says it was no problem. And she left her father behind with barely an explanation! She vows to tell him everything when she gets back home. Him, and Raj.

For now, she needs to know where David and Riley were last staying, on the off-chance that Riley is still there.

An address floats into her consciousness. A motel. Sydney.

She rubs her eyes again, shrugs, and decides to take the hint.

It’s a good thing she speaks English herself and doesn’t have to rely on David’s knowledge of the language to get around, although she has to admit she only understands about half of what her taxi driver is chattering about. Australian slang seems to be quite different from Seychellois English.

Nevertheless, she arrives at her destination, decides not to tell the man she really is not from Canberra, whatever he might think, and wishes him a good day.

The heat is pressing, even to her. However, she is used to tropical humidity. The air here is dry as dust, heavy with city fumes. She’s not sure how anyone survives in this, and starts to understand why Leon wears a facemask even if no one in Sydney seems to.

And nearly all of her Cluster members live in a city! At least Tuomi must understand what she means.

Angélique takes a cautious breath, hoping the air doesn’t burn her lungs, lifts her hair from her neck, and pulls her small suitcase into the parking lot. The motel rooms line the asphalt.

Would she be able to drive a car through the link? She doesn’t have a driver’s license, but someone could surely help her. It must be nice to control such a hunk of metal. On La Digue, there aren’t many cars, so there’s never been a reason for her to learn. She knows how they _work_ , though. Besides, the island is only about four kilometers wide, so what’s the point anyway?

David’s car is light blue – her favorite color – and it is parked in the back, just in the shadow of a room. It’s very dusty. Someone has drawn stick figures on the hood.

She stands in front of the door she somehow knows is the right one for a while, gathering strength, because what if no one is here? The car is here, so if both Riley and David are not, that means something really, really bad has happened.

That’s practically a given, though, something in her says.

“Shut up, Alin,” she hisses, and knocks.

“Hello?” comes a muffled, familiar voice from inside. Angélique makes a strangled sound. Riley. Riley’s okay.

“Hello,” she returns. The door opens a little, and one brown eye squints at her. Riley is taller than she thought they’d be. She must have been seeing them from David’s perspective all this time.

“Can I help you?” Riley asks.

“Yes! It’s so good to see you, my name is Angélique Verlaque, I’m from David’s Cluster.”

“Oh!” The eye widens, and so does the gap between the door and its frame. “ _You’re_ Angélique? He didn’t say you were this cute.”

Angélique smiles shyly and smoothes out the wrinkles in her dress.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” Riley says. “Oh, but where are my manners. Riley Greenwood.” They stick out their hand.

 She shakes it. “I know.”

“I suppose you do, yeah. Weird. Fascinating, but weird.”

Inside, the air conditioning is on full blast. The sweat cools on Angélique’s skin, making her shiver.

“Where are you from again? Dave probably mentioned, but I tend to forget things like that.”

“The Seychelles. It’s an island group in the Indian Ocean, above Madagascar.”

Riley nods appreciatively. “That sounds very nice. Must have been a long trip, nah?”

“Yeah.” She fidgets with her dress. “I— Do you have any idea what happened to David? The connection just… Cut off.”

“Cut off? Oh no.” They wring their hands. “I was hoping you were here because you knew something about Dave. All I know is that he went back to that place, without telling me, and he hasn’t come back! What does it mean that the connection is gone?”

“No! No, it’s not gone!” Cold fear grips her heart at the thought alone. To lose any member of the Cluster would be like losing part of herself, like losing her mother all over again. “It’s still there, he’s still there. But it’s like he can’t return the call or something like that. No, he’s… He’s out there. Just out for the count.”

Riley breathes out a sigh of obvious relief. Angélique doesn’t need to be connected to them to feel the tension break.

“So then what?” they ask.

“We need to help David,” she says softly. “We can’t lose him. It’d break us.”

“You know what, it’d break me too.”

* * *

Eduard feels guilty. He can’t put it any other way. He should have made sure David would be okay when he went back there. He’s the one with the means, after all. Even if his means are more limited, here in America.

Olympe must have very generous friends. Eduard is not sure any of his own friends would have let the three of them in so unhesitatingly. Then again, most of his friends aren’t as rich as Huang Paredes. In fact, none of his friends are.

Still, they can’t stay here forever. They need to do something about InGRes in order for them to return to normal. But first, and for _that_ to happen, they need David back. He’s the backbone of the Cluster.

“It’s fairly simple,” he tells Angélique in Sydney. “He’s not there – here – anymore. I finally managed to get into InGRes’s databases, and any new projects, as they say, are now handled at a facility more inland.”

Angélique nods. “So we go there.”

“Yes.”

“Where is there?” Riley asks. “ _What_ is there?”

Angélique explains patiently. She is the most anxious out of the Cluster, and not only because she is the one who’s going to have to go into possible danger. The static coming from David affects her the most, simply because she’s closest to him. That’s the reason _she’s_ in Australia, of course, and not Eduard himself, or Leon or Tuomi.

“We’ll all be there to help when you get there,” he tells Angélique.

“Thank you, Eduard.”

“Don’t thank me. We all want him out of there. Wherever that is.”

She smiles sadly, eyebrows drawn together, but nods. “We’re going as soon as we can.”

* * *

Everything is cleaner than it has been for a decade at least, and Alin feels tired but very satisfied with his work. He even got the bats out of the attic, though it pained him to have to do so.

He’s fallen asleep on the couch, and when he wakes up, there is a figure standing over him, blocking the late afternoon sunlight.

“Luca?” he mumbles.

“I don’t look a thing like Luca,” Olympe says.

Alin manages to pry his eyes open enough to spot her blond hair and purple pencil dress, and chuckles. No, you don’t get much further from his brother’s dark hair and usually oversized sweaters than that. Then he startles, sitting up abruptly.

“Is it time already?”

“Yes. So be helpful.”

“Aye-aye!” He stands up, cracks his back, and walks into the lingering heat of Australian midnight. He salutes at Angélique, who rolls her eyes. She has her hair in a messy braid and is wearing a dark color for the first time since Alin has met her. It looks odd. But the whole situation is odd.

He picks a lock for her. As her. The static increases at the back of their consciousness, and they share a look. Does that mean they’re getting closer to David, or did something happen to him?

He hovers around, half in Australia and half in Romania, one foot on pristine white linoleum and the other on creaky old wood. He watches Eduard’s fingers dance over keyboards and number pads and Natalya urge everyone into hiding while some employees in white coats pass by. Tuomi points them in the right direction after that. He has sharp eyes.

“It’s going quite alright, isn’t it?” Leon asks in Romania.

“Don’t jinx it!” Alin replies.

“But it is, isn’t it?” He has one eyebrow raised in challenge.

“Yes. Now knock on wood.”

Leon chuckles and disappears back to Hong Kong.

His help is needed for another lock. Riley watches in fascination.

Alin is not necessarily proud of his lock-picking skills. He never meant to become a thief, not many people do, but when he had been taking care of Luca for two years and he didn’t seem to be able to hold any job for longer than three weeks – because who would want a twenty-one-year-old university dropout with a kid anyway – he had seen no options anymore. It’s a miracle he still has Luca, one that he is incredibly thankful for. If he were as religious as he was raised to be, he’d believe it was a sign from above they never took him away.

“Alin, do you think this is the right place?”

“What? No idea. Doesn’t Eduard know?”

Angélique is furrowing her brows. “He’s gone.”

He looks around. “Where’s Natalya?”

“Oh no.” She bites her lip. “What if something happened to them?”

“I’m sure they—”

“Alin?”

He snaps back to Romania so abruptly that he stumbles and finds himself standing close before Stefan, who has a hand out to steady him and is frowning.

“Stefan!” Oh no, oh no, what did he see Alin doing?

“Are… Are you okay? You were just talking English to thin air.”

“I’m fine, don’t worry!”

They both haven’t moved, despite Alin’s stumble having brought them standing less than a meter apart. Stefan’s hair is ruffled. He’s in green again, which brings out his eyes.

“ _Are_ you? Fine?”

Alin opens his mouth, then closes it again, biting the inside of his cheek.

“What is going on?” He reaches his hand forward and clasps Alin’s shoulder. “I know we haven’t been friends for long, but I hope you tell me if something’s wrong.”

“We know each other better than we think,” Alin mumbles, remembering what Tuomi said to him.

Stefan smiles, now also taking gentle hold of his other shoulder. His hands are warm. Alin takes a small step closer, and he doesn’t move back.

The anxious hum from Australia fades to the back of his mind despite his best intentions, as Alin’s senses zero in on the man before him. His heart works overtime at the closeness, at how Stefan smells like outside, and like a faint hint of smoke that clings to his clothes.

Stefan opens his mouth a little, wets his lips, and Alin can’t help but let his gaze drop. Fingers tighten on his shoulders.

“So,” Stefan says, voice low, “we know each other better than we think?”

Alin nods. He forces himself to look back up.

The old house creaks and groans. Stefan takes a step closer. Alin can count the dark flecks in his eyes.

He sighs, and grabs the man’s wrists. He can’t do this, not like this. It feels like he’s lying to Stefan.

“There is something you don’t know about me,” he says.

“Oh?” Stefan’s breath is warm on his neck, and he grits his teeth against the urge to say _fuck it_ and give in.

“And I want you to know. You’re not going to believe me, you’re going to think I’m insane, but it’s important.”

“Alin…” The name still sounds so fucking good on his lips.

“Please promise, whatever you think of me, that you’ll leave Luca out of it.”

“Why would—”

“Please, Stefan.” He tries to will down the tears springing up. If he loses Luca, he loses everything, Cluster or not.

“I promise,” Stefan whispers. “Alin…”

He clings to his wrists and says, “I’m a Sensate.”

* * *

“Eduard,” Natalya hisses, “hurry up!”

“Trying!” he shoots back.

Her heart is pounding in her throat. With all the commotion about InGRes, she almost managed to forget about her own main problem; her former employers.

And of course, they manage to catch up with her at the exact moment that her help is needed in Australia. She hates to think she’s leaving Olympe’s friend with the mess.

Olympe can run surprisingly fast in those high heels. She’s already at the car they rented. Natalya shoots into the driver’s seat and starts the engine while Eduard finally catches up and half-falls into the back. He brought his laptop bag.

“I’m not letting them anywhere near my stuff,” he pants by way of an explanation, which Natalya supposes is smart, but still lost them time. While her former employers search the house, with Paredes trying to distract them, the three of them take the highway and drive into the desert. Eduard mumbles something about GPS trackers and pulls his tablet out, and Olympe winds her braid between her fingers.

“I hope Huang will be okay,” she says. “I promised he wouldn’t be in danger.”

“He’ll probably be left alone. I’m their main concern,” Natalya replies. She clenches her jaw.

“I hope so.” Olympe touches Natalya’s thigh softly. The effect is minuscule, but it’s there.

Natalya hopes so too, if only because she can’t stand the thought of letting her down.

* * *

“What’s wrong?” Riley asks. Angélique is shaking her head.

“Where is everyone? Tuomi, did something happen?”

He isn’t sure, but he can feel Eduard panicking, and Alin… There are a lot of emotions coming from Alin.

“Well, I’m still here,” he tells Angélique, who nods.

“And me,” Leon adds.

 “Okay,” she says, taking a deep breath. “We’re getting close. I can feel it.”

The plan was rather hastily pulled together, which Tuomi understands, but it has no information on how to get _out_ , and that bothers him. Getting to David is one thing, getting David himself is another, but there is no telling in what state he will be – probably not a good one – and Tuomi doesn’t know if Riley and Angélique would be able to carry him if it came to that, nor him or Leon. The only one who could carry David, is David. Or Natalya, who is much stronger than she looks, but she’s not here.

Let’s hope it doesn’t even come to that, he tells himself.

Even without Eduard’s handy maps of the place, Angélique manages to find the right ward. It looks like a hospital. Tuomi is uneasy, but he forces himself to stay calm. He is good at that. He was a sniper, after all.

Angélique’s hands become slightly steadier as she fumbles with the lock. What is Alin _doing_?

“Okay,” she whispers. The lock clicks and the door swings open silently.

Riley, who was busy watching down the hall, slips in quickly, and Angélique closes the door behind herself before Leon or Tuomi can follow. They glance at the closed door, but then they’re both inside with Angélique and Riley. Leon chuckles nervously.

The room is white and abuzz with strange machines, only interrupted by the occasional _beep_. There is only one bed, that’s not so much a bed as an examination table. The smell is so completely neutral that it sets Tuomi on edge immediately. Nothing smells like nothing. There is something to hide. And it’s probably not the nice kind of something.

“David!” Angélique breathes. She zooms to the back of the room as if magnetized, to the lone bed standing there, which makes even David look small, dwarfed by the machines surrounding him. He looks pale, but otherwise unharmed. Tuomi closes his eyes in relief, although the static is stronger than ever, cutting into his every thought like a snowstorm in the dead of the night.

Riley curses under their breath as they skid over.

“How the hell are we gonna get him out of here?” they hiss.

“He needs to wake up,” Leon puts in. Angélique nods, hands hovering over David’s arm, which has several needles and sensors sticking out of it.

Leon swallows audibly. “Do you think they’ve, like, extracted anything from him?”

Angélique clenches her teeth. “No.”

In a flash, she rips the bandages from David’s arm, making Tuomi wince and Riley gasp.

“Should you be doing—”

“We have to get him out, and I’m not taking the machines. David? David, please wake up.”

David doesn’t move a muscle.

“Put him in a wheelchair,” Leon suggests.

“Wheelchair,” Angélique repeats. There is one nearby, that Riley rolls over. They drag David out of the bed and dump him in the wheelchair awkwardly.

“Now go,” Leon says.

“I’ll push him,” Riley offers. “You can be lookout.”

Angélique nods curtly. Her hands slip from David’s arm in slow-motion, but then she turns and walks back to the door. Tuomi glances down the hall and signals at Riley to follow quickly. Angélique is now next to David once more.

They reach the elevator without running into anyone. Tuomi would much rather have taken the stairs, but they obviously can’t as long as David is out. Tuomi doesn’t like elevators. He doesn’t like enclosed spaces in general.

The ride down seems endless. His surroundings flicker a few times – he’s back home – but Tuomi forces himself back. He’s needed.

There are people in the hall downstairs. White coats, labeled _InGRes_ in dark blue letters. The exit is behind them, and they’ve seen Angélique and Riley with David already. Of course they have.

“Fuck,” Riley hisses. “What now?”

“What’s going on here?” the tallest white coat yells. “Who are you?”

No Olympe. Riley curses again.

“Security!” yells white coat #2.

“Run,” Tuomi says. Riley takes off like lightning, pushing David as if he’s a projectile. People scatter. Tuomi would laugh if the situation were different, but now he runs after Riley.

His condition is not what it once was. Leon takes over.

“Stop!” someone screams behind them.

“The doors are closing!” Angélique yells, and Leon swears. They’re not going to make it.

“Let the patient go!” the same voice orders.

Tuomi’s heart is beating overtime, and he’s clenching his fist. It cannot end like this.

Sharp cursing next to him. Tuomi feels like crying out in relief. Eduard.

“Can’t get any rest around here,” the man says through clenched teeth. Then, to Riley as he runs up next to them, “There’s a fire escape on the right. It’s open. Go.”

In the same breath, he’s gone, and Riley makes a sharp turn with the wheelchair, their sneakers slipping on the smooth floor. They skid around the corner with Angélique in tow and at least four sets of footsteps following down the hall.

“What the _fuck_ ,” David mumbles.

“Shut up, mate,” Riley says, even as they almost let go of the wheelchair’s handles. The connection being opened once again nearly slams Tuomi off his feet.

The fire door is, in fact, open. Angélique skids ahead, pushing it open wide enough for Riley to push David through, and then they’re outside in the chilly night. It’s cloudy but dry. Rain would be a good thing. It makes tracking harder. Angélique slams the door shut.

“Dave, can you walk?” Riley asks. David starts pushing himself up in answer.

Someone is banging on the door behind them.

Riley pushes the wheelchair a bit further, then stops to let David get up. All three of them stumble to the car. Angélique pushes David into the backseat while Riley starts the engine.

The fire door opens. Five security guards spill out. Riley pulls up like a Formula 1 driver going for the gold.

The guards pull guns. Riley is looking in the rearview mirror anxiously. Their knuckles are white on the steering wheel.

“Just drive!” Tuomi barks. The chance they’ll be hit is small. “Drive!”

So Riley floors it, driving off with tires screeching. The car is going to have to go, obviously.

There are no shots fired, but Angélique is trembling and her eyes are wet. David is half-lying on her lap, eyes closed again. The static is gone. He’s asleep.

“That went well,” Leon says.

 Tuomi lets himself fall into his husband’s strong arms.

* * *

“And so, that’s it.”

Stefan is frowning.

“I know it sounds insane. I know. But I’m not lying.”

“No… No, why would you do something like that?”

Alin sighs, looking at the questionable stain on the left knee of his frayed jeans instead of Stefan.

“I want to believe you,” Stefan says. “I want to. It sounds incredible. But I don’t know, Alin.”

He stands up from the couch, taking what feels like part of Alin’s heart with him.

“I need some time to think about this.”

“Of course,” Alin mumbles, tucking his hair behind his ear nervously, rotating the stud in his earlobe.

“I’ll come by soon,” Stefan promises. He reaches out and pulls the strand of hair free, averting his gaze when Alin looks up at him. “When I’ve figured it out.”

Alin closes his eyes and listens to him walk away. The front door closes with a very final click.

* * *

She comes into view slowly, like a dream come true in messy hair and smatterings of freckles.

“’Gélique?” David croaks. His mouth feels like Wellington left a hairball in it, and tastes like it too.

“David?” she asks softly. There are warm, callused fingers on his face, following the scar that damned cat gave him years ago. He blinks up at an unfamiliar ceiling, water-stained and painted musty green.

“How are you feeling?” Angélique asks.

“Hairball,” David replies eloquently. She’ll understand. Something’s different about her, though.

“Do you… Remember what happened?”

What happened? What does she mean? David’s memory is full of holes.

“At InGRes?”

It comes crashing into his brain like a tidal wave, information from the entire Cluster and his own fuzzy memories rolled into one nightmare of an escape. He squeezes his eyes shut.

“I guess that’s a yes,” Angélique says. “Water?”

He sits up and accepts the glass she offers with unsteady hands. It’s nearly empty when he realizes what’s different, why Angélique seems sharper than ever before.

“You’re here,” he whispers, putting the glass away and reaching for her. “You’re actually bloody here.”

She smiles, somehow apologetic. “I am.”

David touches her face, brushes her hair away. He can’t describe what the difference is, but it is so immense that he’s not sure how he didn’t notice right away. She’s here!

A tear rolls down her cheek. He wipes it away with his thumb. He feels much better already.

“What’s wrong?”

“No, nothing. I’m just so – so happy you’re okay.” She smiles with her lips pressed together tightly. “It was terrifying to have that connection be gone.”

A feeling of love ricochets between them, all kinds of love, narrowing David’s world to just Angélique, who’s _here_ , for him, having never even left her country before. Her eyes are framed by dark circles, but she’s smiling and her skin is warm underneath his fingertips.

“I’m here now,” he says. “I’m not going anywhere.”

She chokes a laugh, throwing herself forward and wrapping her arms around his shoulders. Her hair gets in his mouth, but David holds her silently, unheeding.

After a moment, both of them pull back enough to lock eyes, Angélique’s hands twined together behind David’s neck. He tucks his fingers around her jaw.

The world narrows more. They breathe each other’s air.

Their lips meet.

They kiss slowly, like they’ve done it a million times before, even though the shape of her lips is new, full and soft underneath David’s own.

Every point of contact sends shivers down his spine, intensified by the answering sensation from Angélique. She tilts her head slightly, sighs against David’s mouth. He holds her to himself.

Something clicks. Then, Riley’s voice.

“You waste no time, do you, mate?”

Angélique laughs as she pulls away, covering her mouth with one small hand. David looks over at his best friend.

Riley looks as tired as Angélique, but relief is written all over their face.

“Riles,” David breathes.

“ _Fuck_ , I’m glad you’re back,” they say, and then they’re on David’s bed, throwing their arms around him. David buries his nose in Riley’s collar and closes his eyes tightly.

He’s fine, but where are they going to go from here?

* * *

“What _are_ you doing, Leon?” Mei asks.

“You know, for the most part, I have no idea,” he replies absentmindedly. “It’s mostly Eduard at work here.”

Leon is the one that’s been tasked with getting even more information about InGRes, with help from the virus Eduard managed to install on the network in Australia. They need to know what they might do about David’s escape, if they’re tracking him in any way.

Eduard is frustrated about the restrictions placed on the Internet in Hong Kong, but apparently Tuomi and Alin couldn’t help. There was some mumbo-jumbo about computers that Leon understood perfectly at the time but will never be able to recreate. Just like what he’s doing now. It would be unnerving in any other situation, but now it just seems like the most natural thing in the world. Being a Sensate does strange things to your perception of ‘weird’.

That explains a lot about Yao. Leon grins.

“Eduard?” Mei repeats. “Isn’t that the guy who’s been winning games from me?”

“That’d be him.”

“He’s smart,” she says. There is a hint of admiration in her voice that Leon can distantly feel Eduard preening at.

“Don’t let it get to your head,” he tells the man in the backseat of a car driving along an unfamiliar, stormy coast.

Eduard just smiles tiredly. Natalya points at something. Olympe takes a left. The atmosphere is tense.

“We can’t go on like this,” Leon says. Natalya looks over the back of the passenger seat. Her blue eyes are rimmed red with exhaustion.

“We can’t. It’s time to end this once and for all.”

* * *

Alin is drenched by the time he reaches the house, cursing the ostentatious courtyard not for the first time, because for all that it looks pretty, it’s a bitch to cross in bad weather, especially when you’re hauling two bags of groceries with you. He’s cursing under his breath as a trail of icy water makes its way down his back.

When he reaches the back door, it swings open before he can begin to hope a Cluster member will show up to open it for him. He peers inside curiously.

“Hey,” Stefan greets, smiling shyly. “I saw you coming.”

“Hi,” Alin returns. Trying to shake his wet hair out of his eyes, he kicks the door closed behind himself. Stefan is here. That means he’s reached a conclusion about the Sensate thing, that Alin really isn’t sure he should have told him about. Still, he doesn’t manage to calm the butterflies in his stomach or his erratically beating heart. It’s win or lose now.

Stefan licks his lips. “I thought about what you told me,” he starts. “And I… Alin, you have no reason to make up a story like that except to make fun of me, and you’re not… That’s not you. That’s not how I know you. You wouldn’t risk my anger – not that I am, angry. I _was_ confused.”

Alin can’t let go of his groceries. There is water dripping into his eyes, but he doesn’t move.

“See, I’m not great with people, but I do my best, and I don’t think I was wrong about you. You’re a good person, Alin.”

He feels a ‘but’ coming up.

“I think you were telling the truth.”

What?

“What?” he asks out loud. His fingers feel numb. The bags are cutting off the circulation.

“I believe what you said,” Stefan repeats. “I don’t know why, but I believe you, and I hope you know I would _never_ try to take Luca from you.”

Alin swallows hard. He believes him. This is incredible.

“Oh, I also got you a towel,” Stefan says, tone apologetic.

Alin freezes and stares. He stares at the purple towel Stefan is holding out to him, then up at the man’s face, set in a small, lopsided smile. He got him a fucking towel. Sometimes, he still has a hard time believing Stefan is actually real, that there’s not some elaborate plot behind his actions, but as he looks at him and his towel, he wants nothing more than to say _fuck everything_ and kiss the guy.

“Alin? Hey, if it’s not okay, I can just go, you know. I mean, you live here—”

“No,” Alin breathes, and then, in a matter of seconds, he drops his bags, rushes forward, and kisses Stefan.

His lips are dry and hot, and for a second they don’t move, but then Stefan makes a muffled noise and, with his hands flying up to Alin’s wet coat, presses back. Alin screws his eyes shut and throws his arms around the man’s shoulders, leaning slightly backwards as Stefan presses tight against him, clutching his coat. His eternal stubble burns on Alin’s skin.

It’s by no means a perfect kiss – it’s too messy and too hard, and Alin accidentally bites Stefan’s lower lip – but Alin thinks it might very well be the best he’s ever had. His entire body feels like it’s on fire in the absolute best way possible, every nerve attuned to the man pushed against him.

They stumble slightly and break apart as Alin’s hips hit the edge of the washing machine. One of Stefan’s hands slips from his coat to lean on the thing. Their faces hover, uncertainly, half next to each other, close enough to touch but not actually doing so. Both of them are breathing hard. Alin can feel Stefan’s heartbeat underneath his fingertips when he touches them to his neck.

“Fuck,” the man breathes, hot in Alin’s ear. It’s the first time Alin has ever heard him swear. He tightens his hand in dark hair in response.

“You – know,” he pants, well aware of how hoarse he sounds all of a sudden, “I think – there – were eggs – in one of those – bags.”

“ _Fuck_ , Alin.” Stefan’s voice cracks as he pulls his head back to look at him. His eyes are so dark that Alin makes a sound that could almost pass for a whimper, and he feels his knees go a little weak. He practically holds himself up by Stefan’s hair. And then he, or Stefan, or both of them, crush their mouths together again, Alin arching more backwards, supporting himself on the washing machine as Stefan uses his minuscule height advantage to lean over him. The front of his shirt is almost as drenched as Alin’s coat by now, but his lips are still warm and pliant, parting when Alin sweeps his tongue over them, greedily.

He’s half-sitting on the washing machine by now, Stefan holding on to his collar.

This is – this is a thing, isn’t it? It’s a thing for Stefan as much as it is for Alin. You don’t break like this unless something has built up first.

One of Stefan’s hands is on his face, cupping his jaw. Alin pulls back slowly, but Stefan follows, pressing their lips together in short kisses that make him smile.

“St— Hm, Stefan?”

“Hm?” He doesn’t seem to want to stop touching Alin. Not that Alin himself is any better, really, sweeping his hands over the man’s chest, his back, shoulders, whatever he can reach. His hair is cold and sticking to his neck, but he can’t care in the least right now, not when everything feels like it’s going right for the first time in ages. They could make this work.

Stefan huffs a breathless, shaky laugh. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that,” he mumbles, lips barely-touching Alin’s.

 “I think,” he says, “that I might.”

* * *

Amidst all the chaos of the past days, Natalya has remained a steady beacon of stoicism. At least outwardly. She really is a better actress than she gives herself credit for. Olympe can feel, though, that she is in possibly the most mental turmoil out of the entire Cluster. Her mind is a whirl of conflicting thoughts, confused memories and swirling emotions she won’t let herself feel warring for attention.

Olympe wants nothing more than to hold her and tell her it will all be alright, but the woman would know that she would be lying.

The two of them are sitting out front of a motel room near the Pacific coast, cheaper than anything Olympe has ever stayed at, with the wind in their hair. The paid in cash, in advance.

“When you said ‘end this’,” Olympe starts, voice just loud enough to be heard over the wind and the distant waves, “what did you mean?”

Natalya remains silent for a long moment. Then she replies,

“I meant we need to face the problems we have instead of running.”

Olympe’s thoughts drift to the wave of happiness that rolled out from Alin just a while ago. It was like the storm settled for a moment. _His_ problems, at least part of them, have been faced.

“And how do we do that?” she asks Natalya.

Natalya looks at, but glances away quickly.

“I face my boss,” she whispers. She plucks at the hem of her dark blue coat. “And if I have to kill him to get away, so be it. I want— I _want_ to start a new life. My own life.”

_She wants_. It’s something new to her.

“I’ve been lived for so long.” Natalya is barely audible over the wind. “I’m not even sure if I know who I really am anymore.”

“Who were you? Before?”

“I was… I was Anastasia Braginskaya. Nastia.”

Memories wedge itself into Olympe’s mind. Nastia Braginskaya was a ballerina hailing from a wealthy family. The emotions accompanying the scattered memories of Natalya’s youth are mixed, as if she is unsure how she wants to remember that time.

Olympe remembers flashes of pain, legs burning and feet aching. She remembers the yelling and the euphoria of dancing perfectly as if it happened to herself, just yesterday.

Then, she remembers fire. Natalya, as if in a nightmare, surrounded by flames. The memories turn to flickers. A hospital. Strange people taking care of her, never using her name. ‘Anastasia Braginskaya’ lined in black in the back of a newspaper, ripped from trembling fingers.

There is pain, so much pain. Olympe wants to look away, wants to force it out of her head. She doesn’t want to see Natalya suffer like this. But she can’t.

“So that’s me,” Natalya croaks.

Olympe is crying, she notices, and her fingers are cramped. Red crescents decorate her palms.

“You were just… In the wrong place at the wrong time,” she chokes. “It’s unfair.”

Natalya is silent. The wind blows a single tear down her sharp jaw. “I can’t be her anymore.”

“Maybe not.” Olympe touches her hand, shuffling closer on the bench, almost pressing their thighs together. “But maybe you can learn who you are now, and be that person. Be yourself, now.”

Natalya wraps her arms around Olympe’s waist and cries into her shoulder.

* * *

Leon and Eduard have something.

Tuomi walks out of his house, into Leon’s room, and nearly crashes into the both of them hunched over Leon’s computer, positively buzzing with excitement.

“Okay,” Tuomi starts, “what’s up?”

Eduard pushes his glasses up, grinning. “We know who’s in charge of InGRes! Leon found out.”

Leon shrugs, but there is an undeniable proud twinkle in his light brown eyes.

“And so?”

They glance at each other, then Eduard frowns and blinks out of the room. Leon rolls his eyes at the empty space.

“I don’t really know how useful it is,” he confesses, “but it’s something.”

Tuomi leans against the man’s desk. “Where is this boss?”

“Based in Australia, if I’m right.” He sighs deeply.

“Everything alright?”

Leon shrugs, leaning back in his chair. His guitar is lying on his bed.

“Most things are.” He presses his lips together until they form a tight white line. “It’s the anniversary of my parents’ death today. It’s been fifteen years.”

“Oh. My condolences.”

He smiles sadly.

“You were – twelve.”

“Me and Mei both.”

“What happened to them?”

Swallowing heavily, Leon recalls, “They were going to go to London to, like, visit my mother’s family there. For the first time in years. They were gone two hours, and then my uncle got a call…” He pauses for a moment, and when he continues, his voice is hushed. “My dad, his brother, was dead, and my mother was in hospital. She died hours later. They were in a car crash.”

Tuomi digs his fingers into his upper left arm, closing his eyes.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he mumbles. He can feel Leon’s imploring gaze on him, so he says, “A car crash is what cost me my arm. People tend to think it was army-related, but it was just a stupid accident.”

He doesn’t have to think as hard as he would like to remember the screeching brakes in the dusk, the jarring impact from the left. With startling clarity, he can still see the window shatter in slow-motion, like time froze at that moment.

And then there’s nothing until he wakes up in a hospital, in indescribable pain.

“Oh,” Leon breathes. “How old were you?”

“Twenty-two.” He locks the memories away best he can. “My life was shattered. I couldn’t return to the army, and I had these terrible nightmares. I was frightened of everything. It’s a miracle Torbjörn stayed with me through all of it, even when I was awful to him.”

“Isn’t that what love is about?”

Tuomi smiles tightly. “Yeah, I guess it is. We pulled through, and we’ve become stronger because of it.”

The both of them are silent for a while.

“But, InGRes,” Leon reminds Tuomi.

“Yeah.”

“I know what we need to do,” says Natalya, and they sit in an abandoned picnic spot somewhere in the USA. All eight of them.

* * *

“Enlighten us,” says Alin, sitting on the table and swinging his legs back and forth. Natalya grits her teeth, then says,

“We need to get rid of the person in charge.”

Olympe gasps, and though Natalya’s heart clenches at the sound, she continues, “If he is gone, InGRes will fall into disarray. I’ve seen it happen, it’s the way organizations like that are run. There is one person with an ideology and with the means to carry it out, the rest follow, some profit, most suffer.”

“You’re describing communism,” Eduard says, a disdainful twist to his mouth.

“That is an example.”

He, like Natalya, was born in the Soviet Union. And Alin is from a former satellite state. They know how these things work.

“But – you’re saying we _kill_ someone?” Angélique asks. Natalya nods, and the woman burrows further into David’s arms.

“Isn’t there another way?” he asks, resting his chin on her head.

“No, she’s right,” Tuomi says. “Without the leader, it’ll be chaos, and the law can step in. They’ll have a better shot at getting to the bottom of it when the situation’s like that.”

Eduard asks, “Do _we_ have to do it?”

Tuomi sighs. “If we don’t, who will? No one else knows what’s going on. Not like we do. We don’t have much time to act.”

“Olympe, what do you think?” Leon asks. Natalya doesn’t want to look at the woman, but she makes herself.

Olympe fiddles with her braid, saying, “It’s true what Natalya says, I just…” She looks up and her eyes meet Natalya’s. “I wish I could say I know a better way, but I do not. If we want a shot at getting back to our lives, we need InGRes gone.” She looks away again, and her next words are soft but powerful. “And if murder is the way to it, then so be it.”

Her own words, Natalya thinks. Her own words about her former boss thrown back at her like that. Is she really so heartless that the only option she sees is killing? She looks around at her Cluster members. Alin is chewing on his lip. Leon looks downcast.

David says, “Then we need a plan. We’re not risking anyone else.”

“Yes,” Eduard confirms. His eyes are flicking between Natalya and Tuomi, and she realizes it’s going to come down to the two of them, the only two who know how to handle a weapon well enough.

She can’t do it. She has her own demons to face.

Tuomi nods, his round face more serious than she has ever seen it. His eyes are dark in the gray light.

“I will do it,” he says. “But I will need one of you.” The last part is directed at Angélique and David.

“I can—” David starts, but Tuomi shakes his head.

“I’m sorry. You’re too big to be a good sniper. Angélique, I understand if you don’t want to…”

“I don’t, but I will if it will help us be safe.”

David squeezes her upper arms.

“Thank you,” Tuomi says, though he’s obviously uneasy. Eduard clasps his shoulder.

They’re a weird bunch, if anyone could see them all together in the early morning gloom. Olympe in her neat dress, bundled up in a scarf, Tuomi in his bulky coat and boots, David wearing swimming trunks with his T-shirt.

But they complement each other, and Natalya wouldn’t want to lose them.

“We better start planning,” she says.

* * *

“You’re gonna _kill_ someone?” Riley yells. “Tell me you’re joking! There has to be another way, nah?”

“Not in the situation we’re in now, with the time we’ve got,” David explains morosely. He rests his forehead in his hands, pushing his hair back. If only he hadn’t been so reckless and let himself get caught… He shivers at the memory.

“And _how_? You haven’t got a gun!”

“They’re not so hard to come by,” he mumbles. He hopes to god this will work, because they’re only gonna have one shot at this plan. If it fails, all three of them might have to leave the country if they ever want to live in peace. Two months ago, he would never have thought he’d be part of a conspiracy to kill someone. He’s a doctor, for crying out loud! Nevertheless, Natalya was right; they can’t allow this to go on. What Leon and Eduard have found out… It’s only a matter of time before something worse than Sensates being hurt happens. The methods InGRes are using are less than humane. David himself was lucky to get out when he did.

Angélique has been silent since they met with the rest. She seems closed off, but determined to go through with the plan, to let Tuomi _shoot someone_ using her body.

“This whole situation is a clusterfuck,” Riley says heartily, and David chokes on his sandwich.

* * *

It bothers Alin that Stefan knows about his Sensate thing but Luca doesn’t.

“So tell him,” Stefan says. “If _I_ believed you, then surely he will? He’s smart, and he knows you much better than I do. He’ll know you’re telling the truth.”

Alin touches his tongue to his front teeth in thought, watching his little brother across the room, where he’s drawing something furiously. Then he looks up at Stefan, on whose thigh his head is resting.

“I don’t want him to think I’m crazy.”

“Mhm, I get that.”

Luca _does_ know about him and Stefan, but that was more of an accident. Well – it was entirely an accident. They spent such a long time in the laundry room, alternating talking and kissing because it was hard to stop once they got a taste, that Luca eventually came to check. It’s difficult to hide _anything_ from him, but Alin doesn’t think they would have managed to obscure how utterly debauched they looked anyway.

He smirks. Poor kid is probably traumatized for life.

“You don’t think of him as your kid at all, do you?” Stefan asks. His bony fingers are carding through the messy strands of Alin’s hair. It’s very soothing.

“No. He’s too old to be my kid anyway, and I don’t want to take our parents’ place.”

“How did— What happened to your parents? You don’t have to tell me.”

Alin closes his eyes, hooking his fingers into the man’s sweater.

“Well, you gotta know,” he starts, talking slowly, choosing his words with care, “we’re from a wealthy family. And when I say wealthy, I mean filthy rich. They got off pretty well after the fall of the Union, and I grew up with no knowledge of what poverty meant. Luca was born when I was fourteen… I didn’t know it back then, but things weren’t going as well as my parents would have us believe. When I was eighteen, I moved to Bucharest to go to university. I chose art history, ‘cause who needs a useful study when you’re rich as hell, right?”

Stefan strokes his forearms, which are exposed by his too-short sleeves.

“And before, you lived in?”

“Northern Romania. Close to Moldova. My mother is Moldovan. But I lived in Bucharest, and I was… Barely nineteen, when I was pulled out of a lecture and someone came to tell me, my parents had been found dead in our house. Carbon monoxide poisoning, they said. Of course, I inherited everything… Debts, nothing but debts.” He takes a deep breath, trying to swallow around the lump in his throat. “I had to _beg_ them to let me take care of Luca. I couldn’t bear to let him go into the foster system. He was only five. We had no other living family.”

The tears come as a surprise. He’s never told anyone the full story before. He probably should have, probably would have been recommended to see a therapist or something, under other circumstances.

Stefan quietly produces a handkerchief – and honest-to-god fucking handkerchief – from his pocket and clumsily dabs at Alin’s face. Alin chokes a laugh.

“I sold the house to pay off some of the debts, went back to Bucharest, quit my study and started working. Rich boy, never worked a day before in my life.”

“You turned to stealing,” Stefan fills in.

“Eventually.” He pauses. “So that’s what happened.”

“You did a great job with Luca.” Softly spoken, the words make Alin choke up even more.

Luca deserves to know. Alin shouldn’t keep secrets from him, not like their parents did, even if they thought they were doing them a favor.

Alin hoists himself up, kisses Stefan, and takes a deep breath.

“Luca,” he calls. The boy looks up. He looks so much like their mother. “I gotta tell you something crazy.”

* * *

Angélique called her father, hoping it would make her feel better about what’s to come, but it accomplished the exact the opposite. He sounded so worried, and with good reason. She never should have picked up that phone.

Now, she prays under her breath, asking for strength and forgiveness. When she opens her eyes, she is somewhere else.

“Hello,” Tuomi says, swinging his legs down from the coffee table they were resting on. His eyebrows are drawn together. “How are you feeling?”

Angélique can’t put it into words, so she lets her anxiety pour out, her doubts and fears and her determination. Tuomi wets his lips and answers with emotions of his own, holding her eye steadily.

Regret, trust, love. There is tremendous amount of love in this house anyway. It’s clear in the children’s drawings tacked to a pin board, the toys scattered around, in the small dog hopping around Angélique’s legs as if it can sense her presence, the scent of coffee wafting through the room. She feels at ease, even at home, despite the snow outside. She’s never seen snow in real life.

A sudden hint of mischief in Tuomi’s eyes.

“You know,” he says, “Torbjörn is picking our kids up from school. What do you say we give them a warm welcome?”

“What do you mean?” she asks, though she’s already grinning in anticipation.

He tilts his head to the window, asking, “Ever had a snowball fight?” He knows she hasn’t. “Angélique, it’s about time that changed! After all, you’re one-eighth Finnish now.”

* * *

He cannot wait until all this is over. Eduard never thought he would be this eager to get back to his accountancy job. It’s not that he dislikes it, but somewhere, he’s always longed for a little excitement. That’s why he has the hacking, and his blog, and the occasional LARP meeting when his schedule allows it. This? This is a little too much excitement, to be honest.

It’s his mother’s birthday today, and he thinks it’s the first time in his life he’s missed it. He won’t call, because he has no idea how InGRes and/or Natalya’s employers are keeping tabs on them, and he’d rather not risk it.

On top of that, he’s had a song with far too many guitars and loud growling stuck in his head since he woke up, and he can feel a terrible headache forming.

“Damn it, Tuomi,” he mutters. Some guitars are great, Eduard likes rock music, but this is just too much. Everything is too much.

“Want me to play you a lullaby?” Leon asks. “Maybe Mei will sing. She likes you.”

“What?” Mei exclaims in the background. “Who are you talking to? Shut up, Leon.”

Eduard pinches the bridge of his nose. “No, thank you. Have you gotten anywhere with the surveillance?”

Leon makes his way through his uncle’s small, charming restaurant, which is empty but still filled with exotic yet familiar scents, cleaning the tables together with his sister. Outside, it is as light as ever despite the sun having set hours ago, and there is a cacophony of voices and cars permeating the walls. Eduard misses his peaceful home on the outskirts of Tallinn so much.

As Leon moves, he answers, “Yeah, somewhat, but I think it would be more useful if, like, we could find the director’s schedule or something like that.” He pauses for a moment, leaning on a table. “Do you think the guy’s a Sensate?”

Eduard stops in his tracks. He didn’t think about that at all.

“Maybe. But I think it’s more likely he knows someone else, who is, and wants that.”

“Must be someone he really doesn’t like,” Leon mumbles, returning to his work.

Eduard hopes he’s right, because if this is what he does to people he _likes_ , then what must happen to those who oppose him?

* * *

It’s quiet.

It is not the good, the peaceful kind of quiet Olympe tries to surround herself with whenever she can. This is a quiet loaded with anticipation, like the calm before the storm. She can feel it prickling down her back.

Still, she tries to be steady among all the anxiety, provide a listening ear when necessary, and she teaches Eduard poker when he isn’t busy, if only to keep his mind from drifting.

Natalya is… Fleeting. Olympe hasn’t seen her today. She seems to be planning to take off on her own. Olympe is not stupid, she knows why she wants to, even understands why Natalya thinks no one else should bear her burden, but that does not mean she’ll let her go just like that. They have gotten this far all together, she will not let Natalya face this alone. And if Olympe is anything, she is steady in her will.

She is in the middle of her neglected yoga routine when the air changes. Olympe nearly falls over when Riley rushes by mere centimeters in front of her.

“Olympe!” David says. “It’s all going wrong!”

What time is it here? It is dark outside. David looks haphazard, and Angélique, who stumbles behind him, is wearing his shirt.

“Uh,” she says when Olympe raises an eyebrow at her attire. Her smile is sheepish. “I forgot my pajamas.”

Any other situation, Olympe would have frowned at the excuse, but Angélique is actually telling the truth. Besides, creepy as it sounds, chances are she would have noticed somehow if they did have sex. But that is not important right now.

“What’s going on?” she asks.

“I actually don’t know.”

“Quit speaking French!” Riley yells, and Angélique laughs nervously.

“What’s happening,” David starts as he tosses Angélique her blue dress, “is that Leon just told me InGRes know where I am, so we are getting the bloody fuck out of here.”

“Oh no,” Angélique says, and she disappears to the bathroom to put her clothes on.

“How can they know?” Olympe asks, following David as he runs around, packing his things, and Angélique’s too.

“ _Apparently_ they can track psycellium! I mean, what the hell? As if it wasn’t creepy enough already!”

That _is_ profoundly unsettling.

Angélique emerges back into the main space of the motel room, gives David his shirt back, and ties her hair into a ponytail.

“Where are we going?” she asks.

“I don’t know. I hope Leon and Eduard will figure something out.” He frowns. “Wherever they go, they can find me. Maybe you and Riley should just go.”

“David—”

“No, really. For your and Riley’s safety.”

Riley pops up and starts tugging at their friend’s muscular biceps, saying,

 “No bloody way, Dave. I’m not leaving you out of my sight for the next year, you absolute knob. You’re coming with us and that’s final.”

While Olympe understands David’s point, she feels inclined to agree with Riley on this.

“Just go,” she tells David.

And so all three of them pile into the car Olympe and Alin helped Angélique barter for until it was at a price far beneath its worth, and drive off into the darkness.

So much for the quiet. The storm is nearing.

Olympe stands up in a cool room somewhere south of San Francisco, pulls a jacket over her shirt, and sets out to look for Natalya.

* * *

“You know I—”

“We know you meant it, David!” Riley yells. They’re very agitated. They could do with a little Olympe or Tuomi in their life too, or even Alin and his incessant unnervingly lovey-dovey vibes. David can’t provide that, but he can, in fact, shut up. He’s stubborn, but he knows when to stop, and when Riley raises their voice, that’s a pretty good sign that time has come.

And they used his full name too. They hardly ever do that.

“I’m sorry,” he just says, voice low.

Riley is quiet, looking at the road. David sighs. All because of him, Riley and Angélique have been forced to leave their homes, and now they’re all on the run…

“Don’t think that,” Angélique says. He thought she was sleeping. “We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t want to be. Right, Riley?”

“I don’t know what he was thinking, but you’re right,” they reply, still tense.

Silence descends on the car. David thinks of the gun stashed in the back. It really was very easy to come by. They’re going to have to act even quicker than they foresaw, if they want to keep one step ahead of InGRes. If they find him, they find Angélique, and then they lose their chance at ending it. And more than that – they might lose the Cluster, if the psycellium is extracted. They might lose even more than that.

He almost starts to pray, but he figures Angélique does enough of that for both of them, and why start now after a life of atheism anyway?

“Uhm, not to interrupt,” Tuomi says from the backseat. David hears Angélique gasp, obviously startled by his sudden appearance. Riley tilts their head.

“Tuomi,” David whispers, and they nod.

“Yeah,” the man says. “I know where you need to go. The director of InGRes will be close by this morning. It has to happen then.”

He’s all professionalism now, and for the first time, David sees him as an officer, a Finnish soldier, sees what he might have been.

Almost all of them have the sort of stories Riley would love to put in that book of theirs. David doesn’t. He’s glad of that.

“This morning?” he asks.

“About ten. You should be able to get there by seven.”

David tells Riley, who asks if Tuomi’s sure he’s not miscalculating how huge Australia is.

“I’m not. I know distances, I’m a sniper.”

A brief sense of confusion when Tuomi seems to realize that he referred to himself as a sniper in the present tense, but he shakes his head and it’s gone.

“Angélique, are you still up for it?”

She nods, her jaw clenched. Tuomi looks at his one hand, curled around his prosthetic in his lap, and doesn’t say anything for a long time while Riley drives on.

* * *

Natalya doesn’t know why she’s surprised that Olympe finds her. Even apart from the fact they have a psychic connection, she wasn’t exactly hiding well. And maybe, if she’s honest with herself, she was waiting for her to turn up.

“I know what you’re planning,” Olympe says. Natalya isn’t surprised at all.

“And?”

“And I want to come with you.”

Finally, Natalya looks at her with one eye. “In person? You can’t.” She would be in danger.

“Yes, I would be in danger.” Olympe sits down next to Natalya. “But so will you. Why not share? I know what you are going to say. It _is_ your burden to bear, you’re correct about that, but what’s yours is mine as well, Natalya.”

Somehow, it hurts to hear her say that name suddenly. Natalya has bared her soul to this woman, yet she won’t use her real name?

“Nastia,” Olympe tries, barely above a whisper.

“Not all that’s mine, is yours,” Natalya says snidely. “The danger shouldn’t be.”

“So, what, you’re saying only the good parts should be part of the link? It’s all part of you, and I… I like you, Nastia. I like the you I know.”

How can she?

“So please, let me come along. Eduard does not know, he’s been busy.”

“It will not be nice.” Natalya can feel her determination to face her boss alone crumbling.

“I don’t expect it to be,” Olympe replies.

They don’t speak for a long while, then Natalya sighs and stands up.

“It’s time to go.”

“Yes?”

“Yes.” She holds a hand out to Olympe to help her up. “Are you sure?”

Olympe doesn’t let go. “Yes.”

“Very well.”

They walk to the car together, and drive into danger.

* * *

“Okay, here it is,” Riley informs them. Angélique presses her thumbs together nervously. She won’t have to do anything, but if it goes awry, she’ll be the one searched for. She’ll be the one who committed a murder if you ask anyone but their Cluster or Riley. But she said she’d do it, so she will.

“Angélique?” David asks, leaning over his seat to her. She looks up at him. Tries to smile.

It is already getting hot outside, the air pressing in a way that suggests rain later. Angélique cannot wait.

David catches her in his strong arms, and she holds on to his shirt for a moment, listening to his heartbeat underneath the thin fabric.

They’re just outside a complex that doesn’t belong to InGRes, but has the same sort of vibe as the places that did. There aren’t many people around yet, and no one pays attention to them on the entranceway, their car parked behind a wall that separates the lot from the street.

“So,” Riley says when David lets go of her. They hand her the rifle that Tuomi deemed acceptable. “Good luck, I guess? Is that what you say when you’re gonna, you know…”

“Commit a murder,” she fills in, in a whisper.

“Yeah.” They pull Angélique into a hug. “Tell Tuomi if he fucks up I will personally come to Sweden to fight him.”

That startles a laugh out of Angélique, and David chuckles.

“I will fight your whole Cluster if I have to,” Riley declares. David clasps his friend’s shoulder, pulling them back.

“Good to hear, mate. I’m sure they’d fight you too.”

“Oh, I would,” Alin says. “Hi, by the way. I’m here to get you in, I guess?”

And like that, they become serious again. Angélique takes a deep breath, grips the gun, and lets her body go, giving it up to Alin, who is just as uncomfortable with the weapon as she was, but he squares his shoulders and, in his pajamas, strides off into the compound.

* * *

Natalya knows what courage is.

Courage is Tuomi losing his arm and still building a loving family, is Leon being open about his gender in a society that doesn’t accept it, is Angélique leaving her home for a man she has never met in person, Alin giving everything up to take care of his brother. Is Olympe risking her life to come with her.

Natalya hasn’t been courageous often over the past years. She’s let herself be overpowered, manipulated into becoming little more than a tool for others to use. It doesn’t take courage to shoot people just because someone else wants them gone. If anything, that’s cowardice.

Now, she _is_ being courageous. She’s facing her problems for the first time. Head-on. She cannot back down. There might be a bit of David in her determination, a bit of a lot of her Cluster members, but she makes it her own, feeds it with her own anger and fear and – love, for her family and the world she’s come to know.

Olympe.

* * *

“Riles,” David says when he sees a silver SUV stop near their sort-of hiding place, “it was nice knowing you.”

“Fuck off,” Riley replies. They haven’t seen the car yet, and are leaning against the hood of their own rickety vehicle. “I’m supposed to be the melodrama— Oh.”

The doors of the SUV open, and four – no, five people step out. They haven’t seen David and Riley yet and are heading for the building, where Tuomi-as-Angélique is, if all went well, still waiting for the director of InGRes. This is not him. This is none other than dr. Russell. David sucks in a breath.

“They are _not_ on the schedule,” Eduard says from next to David. A yard or so away, Russell looks up. Eduard freezes. “Psycellium. Oh, no, I’m so sorry, you’re using psycellium now, it’s how I’m here, so they can track you down. From so close, they probably know exactly where you are.”

David clenches his jaw. “Don’t worry.” They’ve got to be stopped anyway.

It doesn’t help much; Eduard disappears in a huff of worry.

“What now?” Riley asks in a whisper.

The five people – two men, three women – are steadily making their way closer to the two of them. David takes a deep breath.

“Now,” he says, “we make sure they don’t get to Angélique.”

He steps out of his hiding place, and Russell’s gaze locks on him immediately.

“Mr Clarke.”

“Dr. Russell.”

Riley stumbles out as well.

“And Mr Greenwood.”

They smile snidely. “Not _mister_. Just Greenwood will do.”

Russell ignores them. “And your girlfriend, David? Where has she gone?”

He doesn’t want to think about Angélique, and how she might feel right now. He wants only for all this to be over and done with, wants to go back to Coffs Harbour, to his job and his house and family and even to that fucking cat that hates him. These people cannot enter the building. He will make sure they don’t if it is the last thing he does.

The air, already heavy with heat, is so thick you could cut it with a knife. David closes his eyes, opens them, takes a deep breath, and lunges. Riley is on his heels.

* * *

As if they planned it, Natalya meets her former employers on an abandoned stretch of highway, of which there is an unnerving lot in America. She knows it’s futile to tell Olympe to stay in the car, but tries anyway. Olympe would probably have scoffed if she were the sort of person who did that.

“Who’s the girl?” her _former_ boss asks. His eyes are as cold as ever.

“Olympe Castil, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” Olympe says, in perfect Russian. Her voice is as cold as the man’s eyes, and Natalya almost smiles.

Her boss huffs. “Natalya, you understand why we’re here.”

There are three men behind him, standing on either side of the car.

“Yes,” she says.

“What we don’t understand… Is why you are. You’re not… Bold. You’re not important. You have no mind of your own. Why leave?”

Natalya curls her fingers around the gun she – stole – from Huang Paredes. Who only had it because apparently everyone in Las Vegas has at least one.

“Did you think it would be better ‘out there’?” He sneers. “You’ve seen it, now come back to us. This is your last chance.” When she remains silent, he adds, “You know your family will not accept you back, right? You are _tainted_ , Natalya. And even if they did want you, _they wouldn’t get a chance_.”

They don’t know who her family are, she realizes. Never have they called Irinya or Ivan by name, nor her parents. The leverage they had all those years didn’t exist.

“My name,” she says, “is _Nastia_.”

Quick as lightning, she pulls out the gun, and before the men can start to register it, two of them are down. The third ducks, but when he comes back up to aim at her, she shoots him too. It is almost too easy. She can still convince herself she doesn’t feel anything when the blood blossoms out on the asphalt.

Her not-boss curses loudly, then pulls out a gun of his own. He takes aim – but not at her.

Olympe.

“Your _girlfriend_ probably wouldn’t like dying, hm?”

Olympe is panicking, but her voice sounds steady when she says,

“I’ve never tried before.”

“If you make _any_ move, _Natalya_ , I will pull this trigger. Lay down your weapon slowly. Come back to us.”

She hesitates. She _could_ make it, she could be faster than him, though his finger is on the trigger – it only needs the slightest twitch. It is an immense risk, that she’s not sure she’s willing to take.

Olympe is next to her, the smell of lavender carrying in the breeze.

“Do it, Nastia.”

She steps back, leaving herself behind. “You could be hurt.”

“You could be hurt worse, if you go back to that.”

“You could be _killed_.”

Olympe looks up at her. The wind blows strands of hair into her eyes. She has freckles on the bridge of her nose.

“Olympe…”

She smiles, folds her hands around her jaw to pull her down, and says, “I trust you more than I fear him.”

There are soft lips pressed against her cheek. Natalya closes her eyes.

Nastia opens her eyes and locks them on her boss.

* * *

David grunts in pain, leaning on Riley’s and Leon’s shoulders. He’s bruised and he’s battered, but they can get away. They can. All they need is Angélique.

* * *

That’s him. Tuomi recognizes him. He’s alone.

Anyone else would have cramped fingers, cramped everything, but he feels fine. He feels in his element, here on the roof, as long as he doesn’t let himself dwell on the fact he’s about to shoot someone of his own volition.

Tuomi takes aim, squinting through the shitty rifle visor. Now or never.

* * *

She will not be controlled any longer.

* * *

BANG.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is sooooo little RoBul content............. I need more.................
> 
> Anyway, this was pretty much the last real chapter. The next one is just wrapping up, and then there's only an epilogue left!


	7. a great inspiration

The weather is bright and sunny in Bucharest. The people have taken to the streets, the terraces, the parks. It’s summer.

The scent of paint still clings to the walls in what Alin now also dares to think of as his house, although the largest part of it is now a proper B&B. Almost, anyway. A few final touches here and there, and they’ll be ready for business.

The first guests are arriving today.

“Arrival hall one,” Stefan says, peering at the list of arriving planes. “He’s just landed.”

Alin knew that already. He felt the bump in his own knees.

“So what does he actually look like?” Luca asks from his other side.

“You’ll see,” Alin replies, and Luca rolls his eyes. Stefan chuckles under his breath.

They wait a while. Something in Alin’s chest loosens like spring uncoiling, completely slackening when the sliding doors of the arrival hall open and Eduard steps out, pulling along a bright turquoise suitcase and locking eyes with him immediately. Alin grins broadly, and the man smiles back, hurrying over.

“Alin,” he says, and then nothing because Alin is hugging him tightly. He feels solid in his arms, like Stefan or Luca would, and he’s never noticed the difference before, but now he’s never not going to. Oh well.

“So I guess that’s him,” Luca says, obviously bemused.

Eduard extracts himself from Alin’s grip and holds a hand out to him.

“Luca, right? It’s nice to meet you for real. I’m Eduard.”

“So weird,” Luca mumbles under his breath while he shakes the man’s hand. Stefan follows.

“Stefan Borisov.”

“I know. Eduard Mets.”

“Your Romanian is… Your Romanian is Alin’s, isn’t it?” Stefan asks, frowning. It occurs to Alin they’re going to have to figure something out about the language issue, because Riley and Mei probably don’t speak Romanian. They will both be arriving tomorrow, barring any problems with their flights. Hey, what does Stefan mean ‘Alin’s’ Romanian? Does he have an accent?

“I guess it is!” Eduard chuckles as Luca re-iterates his earlier statement about how weird the situation is.

“Anyway,” Alin says, “Olympe and Nastia are getting here in about an hour, not that you didn’t know that already… But we thought we’d wait.”

“Sure thing.”

So they wait, and they talk. Mostly, Alin talks. He feels so much better than half a year ago. He’s got a proper home and a job to go with it, he’s got Stefan, he’s got Luca – he’s got Eduard and Leon and all of them. Had anyone told him where he’d be right now in December last year, he’d have laughed in their face.  But, he guesses, he deserved something good after everything he’s done to keep afloat.

* * *

Nastia is… Nastia is happy. She’s sure she is. Not always, of course, but not never either, and that is good.

Everything has changed over the past few months. Starting last year before Christmas, of course, her life has been turned on its head. For one, she is Nastia again, if not Nastia Braginskaya – that didn’t feel right. She isn’t that girl anymore. She’s grown into a different self. Her plane ticket is made out to Anastasia Arlovskaya. She thinks she might stick with that.

Eduard has been extremely helpful in getting her settled after she shot her boss, and the ensuing scramble to leave America, but Olympe has helped even more, at times just by being there. At other times, by referring her to a psychologist, by allowing her to stay in her apartment in Monaco, by working tirelessly through the legal difficulties of her case. By taking her to her old ballet school.

Despite everything, Nastia found that she still loves ballet, and she’s been helping out around the school. Maybe, when she’s settled into her true new life, her new self, more, she could make a new career out of that. She would like that very much.

She knows her former employers are still out there, but they have left her alone, and she suspects it will stay that way. Getting rid of her now would only attract unwanted attention, and she sent out a pretty clear message by killing her boss. It’s not like she knows anything substantial about the organization she spent nine years working for; she was only ever a foot soldier, so she cannot tell anyone about them. There were never any names divulged to her, never more information than needed. It’s not like the situation with InGRes. The police can’t sweep this up. She’ll have to live with that.

Her and Olympe… Their relationship doesn’t lend itself to words very well. Sometimes they sit in silence for hours, content in each other’s presence. Sometimes Nastia has bad days – she’s had to learn it’s fine to have those – and will not want her around, and Olympe will comply. In time, Nastia might be able to love her. She might be able to be in love with her. But that is for the future.

Now, they have arrived in sunny Bucharest, met up with Eduard, and Alin and his brother and boyfriend.

It was Angélique and Leon who came up with the idea of meeting in real life, and Alin was quick to offer his place. Nastia had her doubts at first, but Olympe managed to convince her. She was willing to be convinced.

“Here we are!” Alin exclaims, rocking back on his heels and making a sweeping arm gesture. Nastia has to admit the house has considerably improved since she saw it first, still with bats in the attic and dirt in every crevice. It is grand, and made of rough bricks. Ivy creeps up the walls.

Stefan Borisov – and she knows how every _inch_ of the man feels, which is one of the things about being a Sensate that she will never get used to – leads her and Olympe to their rooms on the second floor. Out of habit, Nastia catalogues the exits, and is pleased to see she’s been put on a corner, closest to the stairs. Alin is smarter than she gives him credit for.

“You know I heard you thinking that,” the man in question says when she arrives back in the garden. “I’m plenty smart, I went to university.”

Shaking her head in amusement, she sits down.

“Can I take a picture of you?” Alin asks, already pulling a camera out of his bag. She raises an eyebrow. “For posterity.”

Nastia shrugs. As long as she doesn’t have to smile.

Alin grins and takes a photograph. Nastia smiles despite herself.

* * *

It takes some time getting used to actually being able to talk to Mei or Riley and have them _hear_ him, Eduard thinks. And then not having them talk back in Estonian, because they obviously do not speak Estonian.

Everyone has just started speaking English, since that is the only language they _all_ have in common. The second place of most-common language goes to Russian, but that is the last language Eduard wants to speak, honestly, and he doesn’t think Alin and Tuomi and Stefan would be in favor either.

“Eduard!” Mei exclaims. She pronounces his name in a nice way.

“Yes?”

“Did you really forge a passport for Nastia?”

“Uh…” He pushes his glasses up. “Not all by myself. I don’t have the skills for that. There were other people involved.”

She grins wickedly, her eyes twinkling as she sits down at his side. “Still. Badass.”

He smiles. He likes Mei in person. She is like a force of nature, very excited to meet all of them. The same can be said about Riley, who, he’s pretty sure, hasn’t stopped talking since their plane touched Romanian soil. Right now, they’re chattering at Luca across the yard. It must be weird to see the Cluster interacting for all of them.

Tuomi’s husband and sons couldn’t come, but Tuomi has promised Eduard they’ll come visit in Tallinn when they go to Finland later this year. It’s close, after all. Eduard has been told Lars will like him. The four-year-old has an – according to Tuomi, ‘worrying’ – obsession with anything electronic. Eduard can see where he might come in.

“It’s a pity there’s no game console here,” Mei continues. “I’d like to beat you, Eduard.”

“Likewise,” he says.

“Because you haven’t done it often enough already, you mean!” She pokes at his upper arm. “Leon is such a cheater, letting you do all the work.”

He laughs. “He is, isn’t he?”

Alin sweeps by and takes a picture of the two of them laughing, winking at Eduard overtop his photo camera. He hasn’t parted with the thing in the two days they’ve been here.

“Oh, shut up,” Eduard tells him, and he laughs and rushes off again.

“What’d he say?” Mei asks, now leaning slightly into Eduard’s side. She has a flower in her hair that smells sweet, permeating the summer air. Her bare arm is warm against his.

“Nothing. Nothing important.”

“Mkay, if you say so.” She chuckles. “You guys are really weird, you know that?”

He’s aware, but he likes it. There are so many different personalities in the Cluster, and together, they managed to overthrow an entire organization that was out to get them.

After the messy, uncoordinated fleeing that happened both in Australia and America, it was a matter of time before InGRes came crashing down. Anonymous tips to the police in Australia, and then everything happened quickly. They are no longer a threat. Eduard finally came back home mid-February. He counts himself lucky he still has his job. Not much has changed otherwise, though he’s gotten more cautious with his hacking and started to play the piano more. It’s calming. He also thinks he might try to write something more substantial than blog posts at some point.

Eduard has realized his life is _his_ to do with whatever he wants; he doesn’t have to follow the beaten tracks.

He has contacted Nastia’s sister, Irinya, at Nastia’s request, and has tried to explain to her the situation without sounding insane. It’s been working so far, luckily. Irinya is a kind and understanding woman. After this week in Romania, he’s going to Saint Petersburg to meet her, in hopes of telling her exactly what’s going on, that her sister is alive and well and living in Monaco. Nastia didn’t know if she could do it herself yet, but she’ll get there. He knows she will.

* * *

“Okay, everyone, gather ‘round!” Riley exclaims at the people assembled in the garden. It’s dusk – Tuomi hasn’t seen the sun set in a long while, used to the midnight sun in the north. Riley is standing on a bench.

The accent, Riley and David’s Australian accent, took some getting used to, but it’s rather charming, actually. Tuomi has noticed his own English has more Australian attributes than ever before, which is amusing.

“Yeah? Everyone here?” Riley grins. “Okay, I’ve decided it’s open mic night now, and I would like to present to you the manuscript of my newest book! It doesn’t have a name yet, and it’s not edited and kind of sucks still, to be honest… But it’s all I have, and I want you guys to read it, because it is about you, in a way. Dave will tell you I like to take some artistic liberties.”

Tuomi remembers something about a character wrestling an evil cat, and chuckles while David rolls his eyes.

“But! You’ve all been a great inspiration, so thank you.” Riley pulls a stack of paper out of their bag. “Angélique, I’d like to present it to you first.”

She smiles, reaching for the manuscript. “Thank you, Riley, I’m honored.”

They nod. “Okay, so has anyone else got an act for open mic night, because otherwise this is terrible.”

“Leon!” Mei exclaims, next to Eduard. “You could sing something!”

Leon opens his mouth, then bites his lip. He is hesitating.

“Yeah!” Alin adds.

“Oh, uh…” Leon takes a deep breath. “Okay.”

He hasn’t gotten much further in the past months, in terms of a musical career. He left Thencewind after some _extremely_ insensitive comments from the keyboardist, which he knows weren’t meant to be harmful but hurt anyway, and has been floating around since then. Tuomi taught him to play the bass guitar, and he’s been practicing violin with Olympe. Leon has talent, but Tuomi is afraid it won’t come to fruition in Hong Kong, just because of who he is. It angers him.

Leon sits down on the edge of the table with his ukulele, looking at all of them nervously. Luca starts clapping, and he smiles, takes another deep breath, and starts to sing. His voice is clear and recognizable.

Next to Tuomi, Egil leans his elbows on the table and tilts his head.

“He’s good,” he says appraisingly. “Does he play the guitar as well?”

Tuomi nods, raising his eyebrows. He hasn’t seen Egil often lately. What’s up with him?

“Nice.”

They listen silently. Egil doesn’t disappear. He taps his fingers against his temple.

“Ah,” he says when Leon is done, and everyone has clapped and cheered enough, “Tuomi, please tell him I really liked that.”

Confused, Tuomi walks up to Leon to relay the message.

“Egil?” he asks. “Your… I know this. Your husband’s cousin’s best friend’s brother? Thanks, I think?”

“Tuomi,” Egil says now, “I know this is gonna sound insane, and he’s from – from Hong Kong, right? But you know how I study music theory?”

“M-hm?”

“Please ask him if he could play with me, if just once. Maybe he could even do it from over there. He’s…” Egil bites his lip. “Exactly what I’ve been looking for, for my final assignment.”

Tuomi is stunned.

“Please? It is so hard to find good musicians, you have no idea.”

“Uh, yeah, Leon – Egil wants to know if you’d play with him for his study. He says you’re exactly what he’s looking for.”

Confusion as well as pride rolls off Leon. “For his study? How does that— What does he mean?”

“Well, it’s—” Egil pauses. “Tuomi, you have my number, right? Can you give it to him? I wanna talk to him. This could be something.”

Maybe Egil is what Leon needs, Tuomi thinks a little later, watching Leon talk rapidly on the phone in Swedish. For that breakthrough in his career. If not in Hong Kong, then in Sweden. He would be very happy for both of them.

* * *

All together, they do some touristic sightseeing of Bucharest, which is a lovely city if you tune out Alin’s commentary. David and Angélique take off on their own on the third day of their stay in Romania. Everything has been rather hectic, and it’s the first time they can have a good talk. And a proper date, like they never got around to when she was in Australia. She had to leave quickly when everything was said and done. They couldn’t risk her being caught.

Angélique feels right under David’s arm, like she belongs there. She fits. They haven’t seen each other in real life for the past four-and-change months, and it’s different through the link.

They sit on a bench somewhere in the city, eating ice cream. The weather is still beautiful. They watch the people milling about, mostly silent.

“So your mother doesn’t know you were involved with InGRes?” Angélique asks.

“Nah. And good thing.” His mother is a police officer, and she helped tackle the mess they left behind. She has her suspicions, David knows, but she hasn’t voiced them, so he is content to leave it at that. He’s miraculously managed to keep his job and convince his family he had a minor breakdown, but that he’s fine now.

“Do you think you will ever tell them what happened? That you’re a Sensate?”

He thinks for a moment, swallowing the last of his ice cream. “I don’t know. Maybe my siblings, but I don’t… Need to.”

“No, of course.” She licks up a bit of ice cream that is running down her wrist. “My dad has been very supportive. I’m lucky.”

Daniel Verlaque, Angélique’s father, sees the Cluster as a miracle. He’s a great man. David would like to meet him in person someday.

“You should come visit,” Angélique says. “You and Raj could go surfing.”

“Definitely.” He wants her to meet his parents too, and he knows Riley kind of missed her. They were a good duo.

She bites into the wafer of her ice cream. He feels the crunch against his own lips.

“David?”

“Hm?”

“I think I could be happy in Australia.”

He pulls back slightly to look at her. She licks her lips, which are sticky.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean…” She pushes her hair out of her eyes. “I mean, if you would have me, I would gladly come to Coffs Harbour. To you. It doesn’t really… We can’t go on like this forever.”

She is so beautiful, here in the middle of Bucharest, and she is proposing to move across an entire ocean to come live with him. If he would _have her_. Like that’s a question.

“Are you serious?”

“Of course I am!” She laughs. “And my father, as I said, is nothing but supportive, though he would like to meet you. You know, scare you a little.”

“You’re…” He grins and leans down to kiss her, muffling her laughter. Someone wolf-whistles. David doesn’t care.

“So yes?” she asks when they pull apart, slightly out of the breath.

“Yes!” He cups her jaw, feeling the softness of her skin. “I love you.”

The feeling that expands from her chest could have leveled the entire city with its force. Love.

“I love you too.”

* * *

Riley is a good writer, Olympe thinks. They have written a captivating story that’s obviously their story and yet completely different. She recognizes herself in the lawyer character. She could be a lawyer, legally. But she likes playing poker, though she reckons she’ll be staying in Europe, and participate in online tournaments, for a while. At least as long as Nastia is staying with her.

That might be a long while. She wants it to be a long while.

She’s never told Huang what exactly what went on, but he is fine, and taking it in stride as he does most things. She likes him for that. He would be a good person to have in a Cluster.

It’s evening, and everyone is happy, some slightly drunk. Mei is hanging on to Eduard, and Alin seems to have forgotten all languages but Romanian, because he is yapping excitedly at Riley, who obviously doesn’t understand and was relying on David for translations until David and Angélique disappeared some ten minutes ago. Tuomi is mostly sober and looking thoroughly amused with everyone. Nastia and Stefan have been talking quietly about something.

It is peaceful. It’s nice to be able to be together like this. Olympe had to convince quite some people it was okay to ask her to pay at least part of their plane tickets. She has enough money to fly all of them around the world, twice. But she’s good at convincing people, even though with the Cluster it is considerably harder than any ordinary person.

“What the _hell_?” Leon exclaims, as Tuomi bursts out laughing, and Olympe snaps out of her thoughts to find that Eduard and Mei are kissing, clumsily but obviously enjoying themselves. That must be weird for Leon. Alin has pulled out his camera, but Stefan reaches out to tug it from his hands gently, and he pouts at the man.

“Mh— Sorry,” Eduard mumbles, not sounding the least bit apologetic. Mei tugs at his hair and kisses him again. Leon grimaces and looks away. He’s amused, though. Tuomi is _wheezing_. He’s obviously more drunk than he let on.

Nastia catches Olympe’s eye, and smiles. Olympe smiles back. Her heart swells. She isn’t alone anymore.

* * *

 “Uhm,” Eduard says when Leon runs into him in the downstairs hall of the B&B. He rubs his neck self-consciously.

“Yeah?”

“Sorry about… Last night. Your sister… That must have been awkward.”

Leon tries to keep a stern face. “I’ve learned to tune Mei out very well.” He cracks a smile. “Okay, it was weird, but you were happy, and as long as you, like, keep your thoughts to yourself, it’ll be fine.”

Eduard smiles, a touch sadly. “But it won’t happen again.”

“Hm?”

They walk to the living room, where Luca is putting breakfast on the table.

“I’m not leaving Estonia, and Mei is not leaving Hong Kong, so it won’t be more than this. It was great, I like her, but it’s going to stay at this, we both understand that. It’s a matter of being practical.”

“Ah.” He guesses that does make sense. And he’s a little relieved, to be honest. There would have been so many awkward situations if Eduard and Mei would ever become a couple. “As long as you had fun, I guess?”

Eduard nods, and they both sit down at the breakfast table.

“Good morning!” Luca greets, chipper as ever.

“Hi Luca,” Eduard says, smiling at the teenager, who looks more than Alin than Leon ever thought he did through the link. He’s been hanging out with Riley a lot, Leon has noticed. Amused, he hopes David’s friend doesn’t rub off on him too much. Riley is on a whole different level than all of them. They’re great, though. None of the Cluster would be here if it weren’t for them.

This is the last full day they’re all in Bucharest. Most people have planes leaving tomorrow, at several times throughout the day. It’s been a great week. There is a sense of peace in Leon’s mind. And excitement, mostly because of Egil Thomasson, who needs a guitarist for his assignment as well as a band in general. They’re going to figure something out. Leon wouldn’t be opposed to leaving Hong Kong, as much as he loves his home. He’d love to see more of the world.

It will all work itself out, he’s still convinced of that.

* * *

“So, this is goodbye,” Riley says. “It was so great to see you again, Angélique. I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll be in Australia soon,” she assures them. “And then I’ll stay.”

“Unbelievable.” They’re shaking their head. Angélique smiles widely.

She is the last person who will be leaving Romania. The rest have already gone back home, with David and Riley leaving in an hour or two. Tuomi has gone back to his new job in a bookshop, Nastia to Monaco, Eduard to meet Irinya in Russia… She misses them already, despite the link.

“Angélique,” David says, hugging her tight. “I’ll see you soon.”

“Yeah.” She pulls back enough to kiss him. They linger when they break apart.

“Mate,” Riley says softly. “We’ve got to go.”

“Yeah,” he breathes against her mouth. His thumbs stroke circles into her waist through her dress.

“Soon,” she says. They’re all safe now, so they can build whatever they want, at whatever pace they want. All of them are only twenty-eight, they’ve got time yet.

“Soon.” David stands up straight, and he and Riley disappear through the security check. They both wave – Riley blows a kiss, and David pushes at their shoulder affectionately. And then they’re gone. Angélique doesn’t open the link. They’ve all gotten better at controlling it, which can be useful, though she’s sure none of them learned in time to avoid getting an eyeful at some point, whether it was Stefan Borisov or Torbjörn Oxenstierna. She’s not about to complain, to be honest. They’re both good-looking, if not really her type.

With a smile, she walks back to Alin, who’s in the main hall. Her plane will leave in a few hours, and he’s promised to wait with her. The man stands out in a way she knows he was afraid to do for many years, wearing a bright red shirt and tight jeans. He looks good. All of them look better than before, Angélique reckons.

“They gone?” he asks, like he doesn’t know already.

“Yes.” Angélique sits down next to him.

“You know,” he says, “I believe we’re all more ourselves now than we were before. If that makes sense.”

It does.

Alin takes his camera out and takes a picture of her as she waits. She laughs, and feels him return her happiness.

The future is open wide. There have been new starts for some of them, and second chances, but this is only the beginning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It looks like I ship HongIce but I don't, not really. But if you wanna imagine something happens there, feel free. Also Estonia/Taiwan is the randomest ship ever, even randomer than Belarus/Monaco, and I personally think it's really cute. Despite the fact that I tend to headcanon Taiwan as the most lesbian to ever lesbian. But that aside. As said, it won't appear again.
> 
> ...There is a different Estonia pairing in the epilogue. Hehehe.


	8. epilogue

**eight years later**

* * *

“Listen, Peter, it’s perfectly fine for you to go out, we just want you to let us know where you are and when you’ll be—” Tuomi gasps when a sharp stab spears through his brain, hand flying up to his forehead.

“Dad? Are you okay?”

Tuomi takes a few deep breaths. He is now, and no one else in the Cluster seems distressed, nevermind that it was definitely a feeling that came from them.

“I’m fine,” he tells his son, who instantly goes back to looking sulky.

* * *

At the same time, Alin stumbles in the hallway of the B&B, having to hold a doorpost against the pain in his head. Stefan is instantly at his side, newly washed sheets dropped to hold him up.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Alin swears, because what the hell was that?

* * *

The proprietor of the beachside venue seems very surprised when both Olympe and Nastia cringe in pain at the exact same moment, the former pressing hard on the pen she was using to sign the rent contract.

“Are you both alright?” he asks.

Nastia glances at Olympe, question in her eyes, and Olympe’s answer is clear to her in more ways than one; she doesn’t know.

“Yes,” Nastia answers shortly, and Olympe takes a deep breath and finishes signing her name.

“I’m glad,” says the man, taking the paper back. “Well, congratulations on your wedding venue!”

* * *

And Eduard falters in reading Eliise a story, prompting his four-year-old daughter tugging at his shirt impatiently, proclaiming that mommy is much better at reading stories and why is he frowning?

He catches Irinya’s concerned glance and shakes his head. Nothing is wrong with him. Nothing is wrong with her sister either. Nothing is wrong with anyone, so where did that sudden pain come from?

* * *

“Egil, for the love of— You have to stop trying to add keyboard solos to everything.”

Egil smiles innocently at Leon. Leon glares at his bandmate, registering that their drummer is laughing in the background, but then everything goes blurry for a few seconds, and Egil is at his side suddenly, eyeing him in concern.

“The Cluster?” he asks.

Leon frowns. Is it?

“Oh, maybe I should have warned you about this,” says Yao, appearing right in front of Leon. “But it’ll become clear in a few minutes.”

* * *

David counts himself lucky he isn’t helping out a patient when the pain hits him like the sting of cold water on a warm day. He just stumbles slightly, but then he’s back home, where Angélique is breathing heavily, clutching her head as she stumbles from side to side.

“What’s happening?” he asks, not letting his panic show only because he’s trained for years in keeping his cool.

* * *

Angélique gasps for breath, curling her fingers into David’s coat.

“I don’t know!” Her breathing is labored, like she’s putting out a giant effort.

David is saying something, but his voice fades into the background. The familiar smell of antiseptic morphs into something heavy and dry, like dust and car fumes; something that she only recognizes from the times she visited Leon in Hong Kong, before he relocated to Europe, and from her visit to Sydney years ago.

This place is unfamiliar to her. A city, crawling with people, cars and colorful buses vying for space on the street. Everyone pushes by Angélique without noticing her in a way that she is familiar with, but no one of her Cluster is around. She tries to step to the side, avoiding the masses. Nearly all of the people have darker skin than she does – she must be in Africa, but has no idea where exactly. It’s not like she ever visited the continent even when she lived back on the Seychelles.

A woman with a braided bun and a colorful skirt leaning against a wall slowly looks up at her. She actually sees Angélique. Their eyes meet. Somehow, Angélique instantly knows that this woman is who she’s here for, and that her role has been fulfilled, so she smiles, then turns and walks away.

She doesn’t know what she expected, but an incredible cold _slams_ into her. The weird thing is that it doesn’t bother her. She just walks through mountains of snow, feeling a slight sense of _home_ at the back of her mind that must be coming from Tuomi, and eventually finds a young man in a red sweater skating on a frozen pond. Well, in fact – there are at least a dozen people skating, yelling and waving hockey sticks, but he is the only one who notices her, skidding to a halt and shouting something at her. It filters through to her as French, which probably means that is actually the language he’s speaking.

She smiles at him too, and walks on.

Slowly, as she turns and finds herself in a small bedroom where a man is resting his blond head on a desk strewn with empty bottles, Angélique realizes what’s happening. She’s giving birth to a new Cluster.

Oh, wow. She’s giving birth to a new Cluster! This is incredible!

The man groans and lifts his head from a textbook. He looks incredibly tired, blue eyes rimmed red. She hopes his new Cluster will be able to help him with whatever struggles he seems to be having. He appears to barely register her, but Angélique knows it’s enough, so she goes on.

Warmth envelopes her again, humid in a way that is familiar to her. But she’s definitely not on the Seychelles. She looks out over endless rows of bushes, between which people are working, picking leaves and putting them in giant baskets. To the side, a woman is reading a book. Maybe she’s on break. It’s her she’s here for, Angélique knows, so she sits down next to her. Her hair is in a ponytail, inky black down her light green coat.

After a minute, the woman looks up at Angélique, and gasps softly. Her lips begin to form a word, but Angélique stands up and is instantly elsewhere.

A group of young men are in front of her in what seems like a dance studio, seven of them in a huddle, talking loudly and grinning at an eighth guy, who’s filming them with a handheld camera. She watches them for a moment. They’re all Asian, and some of them have their hair dyed odd colors, ranging from turquoise to bright pink. It’s the filming man she needs, but he’s too busy to notice her for a while, directing the others and laughing with them.

Then he catches her eye in the mirror behind the group, and nearly drops his camera, spinning around, to the general confusion of the other men, who clamor for his attention.

Angélique tries to smile reassuringly, knowing that when he looks at his video, there will be no one there. Alin and his photography hobby have proven that much to them. Hopefully, this Cluster will be able to figure things out quickly. Maybe they’ll have someone like Leon, who knows what’s going on.

How many people are there left?

A sleek black car races by her, then screeches to a halt further up a green hill. A man wearing pristine white pants leaps out of the passenger side, obviously concerned the car hit her. She smiles sheepishly. The man frowns, pushing his blond hair back from his face. It falls back, covering one eye.

From the driver’s side comes a man in a suit, and she has to wonder – a chauffeur? Wow. He’s older, and he obviously doesn’t see her, nevermind the furious gestures from probably his boss. How old are the members of this new Cluster anyway? Much younger than Angélique herself was, she wagers. She waves at the man and walks into the grass.

A mansion looms over her, perfectly white against a backdrop of mountains dotted with small white towns and snow in the heights. For a moment she wonders if this is where the previous man lives, because she can certainly imagine that, but then a young woman with short blond hair wheels into view, a bunch of flowers gathered atop a set of books in her lap. She stops her wheelchair when she sees Angélique, frowning.

Angélique inclines her head in her direction, even as a slightly older man who’s her spitting image walks up behind her and pushes her along. The girl looks over her shoulder in confusion. Seven, Angélique’s counted now. So only one left.

She lets the fresh breeze carry her to a small balcony looking out over oddly familiar streets, where a man with long brown hair is silently sketching something with charcoal.

He has a familiar profile. He shouldn’t have.

But he looks up, first smiling, then with thin lips starting to form the ‘a’ of her name, and Angélique gasps.

“Luca!”

She opens her eyes to her own living room in Coffs Harbour, with David still standing over her, green eyes concerned. She laughs out loud. This feels wonderful! And a little fuzzy, but that’s alright. She just became a Cluster mom!

“Angélique, are you okay?” David asks.

“I’m wonderful,” she says. “Tell Alin to call me stepmom from now on.”

Before he can react, she collapses into his arms.

Eight people around the world see her go down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ALSO FEATURING  
> Irinya Mets-Braginskaya – Ukraine (hehehehe)
> 
> It's the end! Here's some extra notes, because I know things about this universe that haven't been mentioned. Like! The new Cluster, apart from Moldova, also includes (in order of appearance) Kenya, Canada, Latvia, Vietnam, South Korea, Luxembourg, and Liechtenstein. And Iceland's consists of him, Veneziano, Czech Republic, Belgium, Thailand, Lithuania, Japan, and Cameroon.
> 
> …There's more stories that I want to tell about these people. I might actually do some short things. Like missing scenes (especially between the last chapter and the epilogue!), or something about Luca's Cluster, or maybe how certain characters met or something like that. If there is anything you want to see, you should totally tell me! Maybe I will be inspired. (:
> 
> All I know for certain is Moldova falls in love with Luxembourg. And vice versa. Waha. And I also know I really like the idea of older Moldova having his hair long for some reason. It'd be cool.
> 
> Here is a fun fact, by the way: the character who appears in the most scenes, has the least POV words. (It's Eduard.)
> 
> But it is the end of this story. This is the longest thing I have ever written, and I had a lot of fun! Thanks for reading.


End file.
